RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Printable Version

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RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - nest0r - 2010-03-28

via AJATT: "RhinoSpike is an online language learning community tool that lets users around the globe connect and exchange foreign language audio files. Get any foreign language text read aloud for you by a native speaker... "

http://rhinospike.com/

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - TheVinster - 2010-03-28

Seems like an interesting idea. I look forward to using my sexy voice to help others learn English.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Zarxrax - 2010-03-28

Wow, sounds AWESOME! Hopefully there are some native japanese speakers on there helping out.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Burritolingus - 2010-03-28

I really hope this site's userbase grows, because it has some serious potential. Obviously it's quite new so there isn't a whole lot of anything yet, but given some time, I can definitely see it taking off and becoming an awesome resource for listening.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Smackle - 2010-03-28

I joined.

http://rhinospike.com/audio_requests/fbi/36/

There still needs to be an English native reading of this, but I refuse to do it.
(NAN DESU KA, ANJIN-SAN?)

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - TheVinster - 2010-03-28

Smackle Wrote:I joined.

http://rhinospike.com/audio_requests/fbi/36/

There still needs to be an English native reading of this, but I refuse to do it.
(NAN DESU KA, ANJIN-SAN?)

Yeah I saw that request. I, too, refuse.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - kazelee - 2010-03-28

How the &#64 is that post even helpful... to anyone?

Seems like it was posted just to see if anyone would read it.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Offshore - 2010-03-28

TheVinster Wrote:
Smackle Wrote:I joined.

http://rhinospike.com/audio_requests/fbi/36/

There still needs to be an English native reading of this, but I refuse to do it.
(NAN DESU KA, ANJIN-SAN?)
Yeah I saw that request. I, too, refuse.

What. The. Fook.
Man, that was great for a laugh. I would gladly accept that request if I knew there was any hope I could finish the entire thing without laughing XD

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - nest0r - 2010-03-29

Yeah it's a great idea, lots of potential there. I can imagine other sites will incorporate it as well.

Personally I also still want to see stuff like rather than certain texts, having people in Japan or native Japanese speakers record natural dialogue of others or themselves, respectively--perhaps w/ transcripts. Not spoken as if it's being recorded, but just natural... I mentioned it in that 'is it better to go to another country' thread. In other words, a rich multimedia repository of the kind of audio you'd hear regularly if you were in Japan.

Same with video/sound tours, something along the lines of Sarah Peeble's Walking Through Tokyo but language-rich rather than ambient sounds, and quite unlike that Tokyo Realtime stuff.

I guess online community + P2P-esque reciprocity is key, though.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - TaylorSan - 2010-03-29

Very cool, great idea, nice web site. There sure are a lot of people learning Japanese!

And that's an excellent idea nest0r - I was thinking similarly that the other day.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - wccrawford - 2010-03-29

You guys are laughing at that post, but -any- text read by a native would be helpful, especially for shadowing. I see someone named 'mullr' already did it, but I was going to do it tonight if nobody else had.

You know what's more useful for shadowing than a text read by a native? A text that you are interested in, read by a native.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - trusmis - 2010-03-29

It really needs a recorder in the browser, if one needs to open audacity, have it on a window next to the broswer to be able to read, save, go to the upload, search for the path where you saved and upload, all those small but really annoying steps would kill any contribution...

Wake me up when they have it implemented

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - gyuujuice - 2010-03-29

I allready joined and invited my friends. We need to help these kinds of sites to grow and branch out.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - lagwagon555 - 2010-03-29

I'd love to contribute, but I'm sure no one wants a New Zealand accent, so I'll personally leech of the system without a guilty conscience Big Grin

But it really does seem like a great website, one of those 'why didn't anyone think of this before' types.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - jonjimbo2000 - 2010-03-29

lagwagon555 Wrote:I'd love to contribute, but I'm sure no one wants a New Zealand accent, so I'll personally leech of the system without a guilty conscience

But it really does seem like a great website, one of those 'why didn't anyone think of this before' types.

Same here, I don't want to confuse people with my Irish accent - dis and dat and tirty tree and a turd.

Anyone used the site? How do you rate it?

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Smackle - 2010-03-29

Liosama recorded a clip and he has an Australian accent. Native is native.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Burritolingus - 2010-03-29

srsly, the more diverse a collection of accents, the better, I'd imagine. I know that as a Japanese learner, I love hearing various Japanese accents and the subtle differences between them. English being many times more rich with accents and dialects, I'd certainly think the more the merrier.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - tummai - 2010-03-30

Thanks ts for posting about RhinoSpike here! This thread has brought more people to our site than any other single source according to Google Analytics.

And thanks everybody for all the encouraging comments! RhinoSpike has gotten a really warm reception, especially from the Japanese-learning community.

A couple of comments:

1) As of right now, 100% of Japanese Audio Requests have been recorded by native speakers. Japanese is the most active language on the site right now, so don't hesitate to make requests!

2) We are working on a native browser-based recorder. It will come.

3) All accents are welcome and encouraged! We received a feature request and will be adding an "Accent" field to the profiles where you can specify your accent. Each recording will be tagged with the recording user's accent and it will show up next to the playback widget. This way you can see at a glance what accent the text is spoken with, and you can listen to multiple recordings of the same text to compare accents. You could even use it to learn how to speak in another accent of English if you wanted to. So New Zealand and Irish accents are very welcome! Like Burritolingus said, the more the merrier!

4) Leeching is of course allowed, but we have the system setup to reward contributors by bumping their Audio Requests forward in the queues. This will have a more noticeable effect as the site gets more activity.

5) I think RhinoSpike will have a lot of synergy with other language learning sites.

For example, with lang-8 you could write a diary entry in Japanese, get it corrected, and then submit the corrected entry to RhinoSpike for native audio. Then you could practice listening to and pronouncing your own thoughts with native Japanese pronunciation.

Smart.fm could replace a lot of the text-to-speech audio content with native speaker audio from RhinoSpike.

LingQ users could use RhinoSpike to get native audio and import content in a language that's not their own.

If anybody has any more ideas on how to integrate RhinoSpike with existing tools, I'd like to hear it.

6) We launched 5 days ago and we already have 220+ users and Recordings in 10 languages. Thanks for signing up and helping to spread the word.

If you have any questions or comments, let me know.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - Offshore - 2010-03-30

tummai Wrote:For example, with lang-8 you could write a diary entry in Japanese, get it corrected, and then submit the corrected entry to RhinoSpike for native audio. Then you could practice listening to and pronouncing your own thoughts with native Japanese pronunciation.

That's actually a really awesome and creative idea.

tummai Wrote:6) We launched 5 days ago and we already have 220+ users and Recordings in 10 languages. Thanks for signing up and helping to spread the word.

Good to hear that you have had a great start! I will probably sign up myself in the coming weeks Smile

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - nest0r - 2010-03-30

Word of the thread:

音読
おんどく
(n,vs) reading aloud

Audio

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - wccrawford - 2010-03-30

Tummai, I don't suppose you'd consider expanding your site a bit?

Snapvine is closing down and it was the previous best way to record your non-native speech and have it corrected on Lang-8. We could -really- use a good site to fill that gap. It was especially nice that you could post your snapvine directly on Lang8 and people could listen and correct it there.

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - pm215 - 2010-03-30

<pet peeve>Hmm, another site where you don't seem to be able to do anything without creating an account and logging in. I don't want to do that if I'm just wandering past -- I want to see if there's enough interesting content there for it to be worth my creating an account. If the front page doesn't have some clear links to actual content, rather than a signup page, it's just turning people away pointlessly...</peeve>

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - tummai - 2010-03-30

@wccrawford: We have a lot on our plate right now, but I've added your suggestion to our future brainstorm list. Thanks! BTW, have you seen this?: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2010/03/use-lang-8-and-cinch-to-get-your.html

@pm215: Thanks for the feedback. You can browse all content, including recordings, by visiting http://rhinospike.com/language/ You don't need to signup to see it. I will make a note on our TODO list to add that link to the front page so new visitors can view content before signing up. Good idea!

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - wccrawford - 2010-03-30

tummai Wrote:@wccrawford: We have a lot on our plate right now, but I've added your suggestion to our future brainstorm list. Thanks! BTW, have you seen this?: http://www.streetsmartlanguagelearning.com/2010/03/use-lang-8-and-cinch-to-get-your.html

Awesome!

Yeah, I read that article after I posted the suggestion, but I had Cinch's mandatory intro to their recordings, so I'm still looking forward to seeing you guys implement it. Smile

RhinoSpike: Foreign Language Audio on Demand - zer0range - 2010-03-31

Is there a way to delete recordings that you've posted?