"My Japanese Coach" Nintendo DS game errors and bugs.

[phreadom]

(I'm copying this part of this discussion from another thread in the Introductions forum as we really got off on a tangent and this really deserves its own thread.)

I've been reading some reviews that say that some of the stroke orders are incorrect... both on the kana, and on the kanji... so you might want to double check with a reliable source to make sure you're learning the correct stroke orders.

I'm a little bummed out about this... because it's otherwise a pretty fun way to learn. I have noticed some other bugs while playing as well... for instance on the lesson I'm on now (21 I think), they are talking about the plain forms of the ichidan and godan verbs, but the example sentences they give are the formal forms from an earlier lesson that we've already seen (lesson 19).

Also, some of the kana are written poorly, like み for instance was so bad that I pointed it out to my girlfriend.

sloppy-mi.jpg (29.95 KiB) Viewed 9502 times

Mind you, that's not the み I wrote.. that's the example the GAME gives you as the correct way to write it. I added a couple example み kana from various fonts on my system... IPAPGothic, Arial Unicode MS, and Meiryo.

And here's a video I just took of "My Japanese Coach" showing the incorrect stroke order for the hirgana な

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7UgkXj-1b_w

The correct order can be verified elsewhere... like
http://thejapanesepage.com/beginners/hiragana/na
http://www.umich.edu/~umichjlp/Hiraganapro/na.html
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:%E3%81%AA-bw.png

So I guess enjoy the game, but be aware that there are some errors... it might be good to try to verify the kana stroke orders before you learn them on the game... and verify the kanji when you get to that point as well.

Maybe we'll have to write up an article on here that tries to cover the errors in the game for beginning learners like myself.

[phreadom]

http://thegameprogrammer.blogspot.com/2 ... iewed.html

This appears to be the blog of one of the developers. He writes very positively about the game and trivializes the idea that there are any errors, but the comments on that post have a fairly detailed list of the kana stroke order and direction errors, as well as many other inconsistencies (kana being right in one place, but wrong in another, such as ワbeing 2 strokes when you learn it, but only 1 stroke (incorrect) in the mini-games etc.

I will continue to use the game for learning vocabulary, but I'm staying as far away from the kana writing and kanji as I can. I haven't learned how to correctly write even the kana yet, so I was excited about this until learning that almost 15% of the kana are incorrect. !!!

As a matter of fact, I'll paste here the list I've been putting together of the errors I've found so far myself, and those that others have reported.

Incorrect hiragana: na mo ya yo
Incorrect katakana: e ka chi ne no hi me wa wo

In other words, about 14% of the basic kana characters are taught and/or graded wrong in this program. Count 'em, 13 kana have either wrong stroke order, wrong stroke direction, or wrong stroke count. AAAAAGHHHH! How could they?

No, really... seriously, how COULD they? The correct stroke order for kana is in any number of reference books. It's not some arcane 18-stroke kanji--we're talking about characters with four, three, two.. even, for pete's sake, ONE stroke. (Katakana "no" should be drawn north-to-south, not the other way.)

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Pardon me, but that's not VERY FEW. That's 14 out of 94--just shy of 14% of the basic kana characters have either wrong stroke order, wrong stroke direction, or wrong stroke count (!) This is really inexcusable--especially considering that hiragana "mo" and "yo" are frequently used particles.

What's even more discombobulating is that some of the characters listed above are shown correctly in their first introduction but graded differently in the mini-games. Katakana "wa" is correct in the example (two strokes, short one first) but requires you to write it as all one stroke in the mini-games.

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Lesson/screen/syllable:

10/2 na
10/10 pu
13/2 mo
17/4 ya yo
17/7 kya cho
17/11 e
20/4 ka
20/6 me
22/4 chi
22/5 ne no
24/4 hi
24/7 wo
24/9 (fading characters game: wa=shown correctly but graded wrongly)

In mini-games, hiragana bu is also wrong (see manabu, 21/7).

However, since two of the six hiragana y-row characters are wrong, that also means that many of the combining-y characters are also wrong (kya, kyo, sha, sho, cha, cho, etc.)

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On Bridge Building the current level should not change until after the fade out and fade back in.

Tapping often makes the sound, but doesn't register the tap on a button (doesn't actually activate it).

On bridge building sometimes a piece will not "lock into place", thus causing the clock to run out and the game to end.

On bridge building, the cars driving and explosion sounds should not overlay the voice reciting the phrase, as it defeats the purpose of trying to hear the proper pronunciation.

"demo" sound file has bad pop.

Occasional screen glitches.

"み" hirgana example is drawn poorly.

Stroke order for "な" is wrong. last 2 strokes should be switched around.

lesson 21 - page 3 (actually shows vocab from lesson 19 page 5), and page 5 (actually shows vocab from lesson 19 page 12) - text talks about informal forms, but the examples are the exact formal forms from the earlier lesson 19.

lesson 40 - page 10 - the voice says "kore ga" but the text says "sore ga"

We could probably build on this... perhaps we can create a Wiki page that details the exact errors and list the incorrect kanji as we find them, with links to the correct stroke order, direction, and counts for the different kana and kanji.

I haven't noticed any real vocabulary errors so far, but I'm only a beginner myself, so I wouldn't know for sure anyway.

[Dominikku]

I myself am just using the game for vocabulary and grammar really, Not using it for stoke order, I use physical flash cards I carry around and my "KANA STROKES" application for my iPod Touch (free to download BTW,very good app).

I'd advise others to do the same if possible, its best to avoid learning something the incorrect way, and to learn it properly off the bat, than to go back over it in the future and 're-learn' it so to speak, i.e stroke orders.

- D

[tōkai devotee]

My daughter has been using My Japanese Coach DS game to help her, and it's quite fun. She enjoys the games and has learnt a lot of vocab. So for a beginner I think it's fine. She really wants to learn to write kana and it seems that this is introduced too slowly. I had a go on it and was immediately promoted to Lesson 11, where it's still WAY too easy. I discovered a number of major errors with incorrect kana. By incorrect I mean, incorrect stroke order, or direction of the stroke or even stroke number. There are more errors with katakana than hiragana. More than 10 katakana are taught wrong. This is quite a large %. So for a person who is using just this game to learn Japanese with, it's very poor. But if you use it along with other textbooks, and so on, then you'd get the errors corrected.

EDIT:I meant to add that I haven't yet found any errors with Kanji, grammar or vocab.

[phreadom]

Well, the author of that blog... a one time programmer of the game, left me a rather snotty response about my comment on the game. So I left a bit of a snarky response, but included in it some more bug reports, so I'll include an edited version here as well for reference.

I've figured out one of the other "bugs" that was bugging me as well.

The problem I was having with tabbing on navigation buttons seeming to only work sometimes was because on the navigation controls only you can press on the button and without lifting the stylus, slide it off of the button before letting up. This will highlight the button and make the activation sound, but will not actually activate the button.

On all the other clickable buttons tapping on the button will activate it regardless of whether or not you slide the stylus off before releasing it.

So as the navigation buttons are generally by the bottom edge of the screen, it's easier to tap toward the top edge of the button and have the stylus slide slightly upward and off of the button before lifting again, thus highlighting the button and making the activation sound without actually activating it.

Another booboo I noticed was on lesson 43 on page 3 it introduces candy as キャンディー, but page 5 for the example sentence is uses おかし, which does actually mean candy, but isn't the word introduced on page 3, and isn't the word they use in any of the lessons for that chapter etc (nor any of the next several yet that I've seen), which is キャンディー consistently.

I'll keep updating this as I notice more things.

[tōkai devotee]

I've noticed a "bug" in lesson 15. It is when they teach numbers and counters, they do not differentiate between the small and large tsu. For example, when practising writing the general counter for ten (jukko) , it looks as though it's written as じゆつこ　instead of じゅっこ. The charcters are all the same size. Same goes for one (ikko), six (rokko), and Nine (kyukko)

[keatonatron]

Same goes for one (ikko), six (rokko), and Nine (kyukko)

Well, there's an error in and of itself; Nine is kyuuko (きゅうこ) and doesn't use っ.

[tōkai devotee]

Yes, I thought so too, but sometimes those counters are tricky.

I was quite surprised and don't know why they don't start off by teaching the hitotsu, futatsu, mittsu.... etc standard general way of counting objects. I figure that way is easier and would lead into hitori, futari and so on. I think that if you know the hitotsu, futatsu way of counting objects, then you'll never be in trouble.

[phreadom]

I've noticed a few more irritating "bugs" that fell through quality control.

Earlier today I had the kanji 右 come up in the Flash Cards game, and 2 of the options said "Right". Unfortunately one meant the opposite of left, and the other was synonymous with "correct" (ただしい). I chose the wrong "Right". I think this has come up the other way around before and I just got lucky without really noticing.

Now personally I don't think it would have been that hard not to offer multiple answers that were the same word, but only one of which was actually correct (and to mark you wrong if you didn't pick the correct one of the 2 identical words).

A similar problem occurred in the Multiple Choice, where the word "Hand" was shown, and 2 of the options were technically correct... one being the kanji 手, and the other the hiragana て, which is also just as often as not the answer they're looking for. So when the word "Hand" comes up and you look for the correct answer and see て and click on it before seeing 手, you'll be marked wrong... unless of course て was what they were looking for and 手 happens to have been one of the other arbitrary options they've thrown in... thus just repeating the same problem in reverse...

This isn't something that ruins the game or anything, but it's a slight irritation. I'm on level 66 now and have done tons of reviews and I've seen this happen less than 10 times total I think, and only 3 or 4 where I clearly saw it positively (and at least twice chose the wrong answer). The other times I kind of half noticed it as I was buzzing through the games over and over doing basic repetition reviews of already mastered words... and would think "did I just see what I thought I saw?", or was marked wrong on an answer I was sure was right... and started watching more closely for it after awhile.

(Although I'll take this over the wrong stroke orders any day. I simply don't use those parts of the game anymore.)

Hey, it's keeping me motivated to keep learning and reviewing, so it's better than nothing!

[Frumious Boojum]

Had the DS version previously, entire "My _ Coach" series now available as iPhone/iPod Touch apps.... which is a lot more convenient since I normally don't carry my DSes around everywhere I go.

I can confirm that the same errors still exist in the iPhone versions. Stroke recognition is actually worse since it counts strokes made ever more than before.

Just experienced 森 being demonstrated with the first horizontal line being written in two strokes instead of one...

Currently at lesson 52 (started out at lesson 11 after I got 100% on the pre-test ... I'm rather rusty on my Japanese from a lack of studying for quite a while, but not rusty enough to mess up on the test) and can say that the iPhone version is even worse to use for writing practice since it's so difficult to get good strokes out of your thumbs.

Biggest difference I've seen so far: Hit-a-Word board has fewer moles.

[furrykef]

Sheesh. They made a new version and didn't even bother to fix the mistakes... how irresponsible can a company get? Fixing the known issues should have taken only a few minutes. Not to mention it would probably make them more money than it costs them (since there are probably people who avoid the product just because of the errors), so it's a stupid move from a business perspective, too.

[phreadom]

That actually angers me.

My girlfriend has an iTouch that I'd consider getting it for, but to hear that they did an even worse job and didn't even bother to fix the basic mistakes that everyone complained about!?

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/my-japan ... 63116?mt=8

UNBELIEVABLE.

I still use my DS version... avoiding any of the writing exercises etc. And it helps at least with picking up vocabulary. But I'm hugely disappointed in them as a company for such an utter disregard for their product and the students they sell it to.

[vikingfortiesfaeroes]

If this is still of interest to anyone, I made a video that's on Youtube detailing all the incorrect kana and the correct way to write them.

You can see it at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CUGoAubyTg

Thanks

[phreadom]

Excellent video, and an excellent addition to this thread.

ありがとうございます！

[themonk]

Thanks, Phreadom san.