tokyostyle wrote:

killerducky wrote:

... but I thought the idea was to simulate listening to speech.

You forgot that there are words and grammar that are for writing only and not used in speech.  Also speech has a rhythm and tone to help separate the homophones.

Mcjon01 wrote:

Certainly, they can make things easier, but they couldn't possibly be vital to comprehending the language.

So what does this sentence mean?
Mcjon01がいっちゃった！

I guess someone forgot about homophones ...

(I actually think the kana->kanji is good a idea though.)

I didn't forget about homophones, I just don't think they're as big a deal as lots of people like to say they are.  The huge majority of cases could probably be understood through context.  The example you gave has no context, so it's essentially meaningless.  It's not like I said Kanji should be abolished or anything, or that they're totally useless, just that they aren't strictly necessary.  I still think they're totally awesome and that they make a whole lot of things about the written language easier, though.

There are some niggling points I want to pick at, but they're all beside this overriding point:
I find it painfully naive and arrogant to tell the practitioners of another language that their language would be easy if they'd just 'do this'. You don't have the basis on which to make this claim, whereas they do. I believe it wise to respect that the choice of the entire Japanese-speaking population in the representation of their own language is a wise one, until such a point as you have the same level of experience with the language as they do. After that, you can make such a claim. You'll still be wrong, but at least you'll have a basis on which to be so.

In the same way, it is best to assume that the strangely flowing script and right-to-left writing of semitic scripts comes with reason and is a wise choice. It doesn't matter that it's not how you do it. These other languages are not strange, inefficient languages that could be just as easily or more easily written the way our language is written simply because our language is our language. They're ancient languages, every individual part of which has evolved in unison over sometimes millenia to make a very coherent whole, and you don't have a right to say what would be an easy change. It's incredibly elitist.

I don't mean to personally offend. I want to specify that I'm not calling anyone naive, or arrogant, or elitist, or anything else I might have said. Only that this ATTITUDE is. One is capable of holding an attitude without being any of the things the attitude possesses. It's simply an attitude that I see a lot of, and I don't like to. Listen; you are not the default. Your race is not the default. Your culture is not the default. Your language is not the default. Your gender is not the default. Your viewpoint is not the default. Your taste in icecream is not the default. As learners of another language and culture, I think everyone here is made aware of this to some level or another. But it's easy to forget bits and pieces of it. Please, try to always remember.

sutebun wrote:

I 思 that is a 良 idea.

でも、もちろん、漢字を使いたかったら日本語で書ける。

But 使ing 漢字 in 英 text is also kind of 楽. It's a puzzle.

I 笑'd.

nest0r wrote:

Do you do kanji-->kana/passive recognition as well, or just the kana-->kanji?

I review in both directions, though I find the kanji-->kana review usually takes very little time; I normally remember it straight away. I sometimes have trouble with whether an お sound is lengthened by a う or not which is why I keep reviewing in this direction as well.

Oh yeah, I'm at my crazy period now with school being done and all. For the past few weeks, I've been doing reviewing at least 100 sentences per day (only kanji-kana). Everyday, I add about 50 sentences.

Not strictly necessary, but still a good exercise. I'm starting to notice a big gap between my (fair) reading-writing skills and my (poor) listening skills.
So doing dictations sounds like a good thing, at least for those who don't live in Japan.

I think it's a good idea, but not so much from a dictation standpoint as a pitch accent workshop sort of thing. When I studied Japanese in college, there was -0- discussion of accents. They just never bothered to mention it. Odd. I mean, there's a difference in the pitch accents of はし and　橋. (Something I had explained to me in-depth at Yamasa. ) But not being in Japan really hurts in trying to figure out accents in words.

Out of curiosity, I sent an inquiry to Neospeech, and Misaki costs $350US. Ouch. Miyu isn't as good as Misaki, but that voice is only $35US. "Show" isn't bad either. He's the $35 male voice. The rep at Neospeech said that they didn't have a timetable for releasing Misaki to the public. The $350 version is the basic corporate version. (I'm assuming that's what Khatz did, and why he said he spent so much.) I looked at some other companies, and nobody is even close to Neospeech for quality. (Although some of the other companies' voices are so stiff and robot-y, they'd be great for mixing into music. )

Either way, implementation (as always) is the tricky bit. If you put a sound file for every single sentence... yikes. Reviews would take a very long time, I'd think. Then again, it would give you something to check your pronunciation against. (If you don't have any native speakers to work with, anyway.)

I'm not so sure I'd go the dictation route just yet, though. I might come back to that in a few months or so. Either way, it's a fascinating approach. Gotta give the man credit for trying new things.

More customziable in that you can alter then speed and pitch of the voice to your liking from within text aloud.

Sorry this is a little off-topic:
Neospeech voices don't work on my computer (Vista 64bit) but on another computer (WinXP) everything works fine. I'm considering isntalling XP only to get it to work but maybe Vista isn't the problem but x64. Has anyone tried using Neospeech voices with Vista 32bit?

@Ryuujin
Yeah, I had similar problems getting Miyu and Show to say ～じゃないよ properly, too. They both say ～じゃない perfectly, but the よ really throws off their cadence. Not sure what to do about that.

@ghinzdra
As I said in the AJATT sentences group-- awesome job on the research. Heh, if you were inclined, you could probably turn that sort of thing into a graduate research project.

I think a balance of native speakers and the TextAloud/NeoSpeech combo works pretty well. I use the TTS software to sound out sentences I'm reviewing just for kicks, or to work on my pronunciation... IF it sounds natural. If it doesn't, I'll take it with a grain of salt.

And as I mentioned on the AJATT gmail group, the program does have issues with certain readings, like in instances when 空 is alone by itself and is to be read から　and not そら. When you change it to hiragana, the pronunciation is off. But in the long run, these are minor issues.

Oh, has anyone figured out how to make the dictionary editor work? In this thread:
http://www.nextup.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3840
there was an interesting discussion of the pronunciations that the Japanese voices use, and how to change them.
There was an English translation of the interface for each voice's pronunciation editor here:
http://www.qvidnon.ca/TextAloud-Japanese-Editor.png
But I'm not too sure exactly how it works.

Ryuujin27 wrote:

Oh, and for those who want to test out Misaki or don't have $350 to spend at the moment... well, I'd just like to say that at some site somewhere you MAY be able to find SOMETHING about Misaki for downloading.

Yeah, some site like Google.

No, seriously, I wasn't even looking for torrents.  I just did a search for "Neospeech Misaki" to see if I could scrounge up reviews or something like that, and all I could find was torrents, as far as the eye can see.  It's like you have to try hard not to find them.

Ryuujin27 wrote:

I have it installed and everything, but now every time I type something and have her say it, it is all broken up by word, and most definitely sounds like a computer.

Did I do something wrong?

Did you leave spaces between the words? Misaki doesn't like that

Nope, I didn't put any spaces between the words.

However, I think I forgot to set up TextAloud, so that may be the problem. I'll let you know after I do that.