Yep, I’m an Idiot

Tonight after months of frustration at the lack of sound in Persian courses on Memrise, I went to the Memrise Madness group on Facebook and expressed my disappointment over my soundless learning experience.

George Muresan, a dedicated language learner and the founder of the Memrise Madness group, responded promptly with a number of links to Persian courses with sound. I responded promptly back saying that I had tried them all and had seen no signs of sound. 

What I Sent George

I then sent George the screen shot shown here, with the grayed-out sound icon under the words “right now.”

A little while later he wrote to me saying that he thought all I needed to do was click the little icon on the far left to turn it back on. You can’t see the icon that well in this image, but it’s that dark thing right below the red stop button.

I clicked it.

He was right. 

I was mortified. 

As I then wrote in the Memrise Madness group, I think it may take me a few days to recover from this one. The lack of sound has significantly slowed me down. No joke.

I have logged gadzoodles of hours on Memrise, inventing my own sounds for Persian words while wondering why so many creators of Memrise courses were lying about having included sound in their materials.

In case you are unfamiliar with Memrise, the courses on there—devoted to vocabulary—are user-contributed. Some have sound. Many don’t. The ones with sound are generally considered far superior to ones without sound. I therefore apologize to all the Memrise course creators I have doubted. 

The thing is, I couldn’t figure out why absolutely no Persian courses had sound when I had found audio in so many courses for other languages on the site. Foolishly, I never asked anyone for help. I just carried on alone, silently, in the wee hours of the morning, making up Persian pronunciations in my head.

As my grandma once told me, “You have the responsibility of your intelligence.”

My husband is being extra nice to me tonight because he feels sorry for me.