I just published my first Andoid app. It’s called “Kikisuuji” which is totally a real word that I made up, meaning “number listening”.

Numbers were always really tricky for me in Japanese. Not in the sense of merely understanding them. They are very straightforward and easy to learn. The problem for me is understanding numbers quickly and in real-time. If I hear a number in English, I just instantly know what number it is. I don’t have to sit there and think about it. It’s automatic. But in Japanese, if someone were to say today’s date to me, I might have to sit there mentally processing it for 5-10 seconds to figure out just exactly what numbers were spoken, and by that time I missed the rest of the conversation.

So, I created an app specifically to train my listening comprehension for numbers! Using text to speech technology, it will repeatedly call out random numbers, nonstop. Your task is to just try to understand the spoken numbers without falling behind! There are several settings to help control the speed and the types of numbers that are presented, so you can start off simply and then work your way up to more and more difficult numbers. You can also practice times and dates as well!

It's free, ad-free, and tracking-free.
Check it out: https://play.google.com/store/apps/detai....Kikisuuji

I always have the same problem with number recognition speed!!
Just downloaded the app and it works perfectly so far, it's makes me break out into a sweat fast but I guess thats the point ..

thanks!

This is really cool! Great job! I wish I had this when I was a beginner.

rich_f Wrote:This is really cool! Great job! I wish I had this when I was a beginner.

LOL me too! I learned numbers back around 2002 and I still needed this now :p

My favourite “number clusters” involve 21st, like in the following:

せんきゅうひゃくはちじゅういちねんしちがつにじゅういちにちごごじゅうはちじよんじゅうごふん

Great idea, thanks!
This seems to be a common problem in language learning. My english listening comprehension is now pretty good (I routinely listen to podcasts and audiobooks on every subject, and I understand them well even when engaged in other activities), but often when I hear a date or a "complex" number I froze a few seconds to decode it, like the OP with japanese.

I'm glad I wasn't the only one who had this problem with numbers and dates! In fact I once tried something similar to what this app does by using a random number generator and pasting it all into a text-to-speech application, but this is much better. Thanks for making it!

Today I had a bit of a slight epiphany regarding listening to these numbers, and I found an issue that was slowing me down.
It seems that whenever I heard a number, I would mentally repeat it after hearing it, and then decode the number while I was repeating it. By forcing myself to NOT repeat the numbers in my mind, and try to decode it immediately upon hearing it, this has helped to immediately increase my listening speed by a bit.

Just out of curiosity, I wonder if anyone has used this app and found it to increase their skill at listening to numbers?
I have definitely seen some improvement, but the amount of improvement feels a bit disappointing in comparison to the amount of time I have invested into using it.
I wonder if my theory that actually listening to numbers is the best way to get better at them was perhaps misguided?
I would love to hear about others' results.

Thank you for this app! I downloaded it about a month ago and thought it was pretty neat. I only got to try it out for a bit, but I do think there was an improvement in my comprehension (even though I only used it for about a week).

However, when I opened it up today the audio was all in English. Not really sure what happened. I don't think I have changed any settings on my phone in the past few weeks, but I can't say for sure. Has this happened to anyone else?

Nayr's core5k has a lot of numbers and dates in it, making it particularly challenging as a pure listening deck, which is how I'm using it.

I find picturing the digits as you hear them helps, though I still dread the thought of numbers coming up in a listening comprehension test.

On the upside, dates are getting a bit easier because せんきゅうひゃく has acquired a similar kind of single-word status that it has when hearing them in English.

justusperthes Wrote:However, when I opened it up today the audio was all in English. Not really sure what happened. I don't think I have changed any settings on my phone in the past few weeks, but I can't say for sure. Has this happened to anyone else?

I've had some random issues with the audio happen on occasion, they seem to be related to android and not the app, as far as I can tell. Try going into your Language and Input settings, and then text to speech output, and make sure japanese voice data is installed. If it is already installed, try deleting it. Next time you run the app, it should automatically download the data.

Let me know if that doesn't solve it.

Thanks! I got it working. For some reason the phone had been set to the "Samsung text-to-speech engine" which doesn't have Japanese. But switching to "Google text-to-speech engine" and selecting Japanese made it work properly again.

Not an alternative to this, which is audio-based, but I found a good way to practice numbers and get them automatic is by using RPGs.

RPGs are good for text (assuming you play them in Japanese, of course) but "waste" a lot of time (from a language perspective) on fighting. That time can be put to good use by saying all the numbers that the game throws at you aloud in Japanese.

RPG fights are essentially a stream of random-ish numbers so it really helps to drill them while actually having fun. I wrote in more depth about the method here.

That sounds like a pretty good idea.

Isn't the verb usually at the end though? E.g. 山登り

I'm guessing it's intended as a kind of "pun" on 聞き取り and not as "real" Japanese.