Hi @HotAirGun, thanks for the feedback! We’ll definitely look into adding this kind of option in the future, and will continue to improve the system moving forward.
The missing dakutens or handakutens is not something I have experienced myself, so if you could point me to an example of this I will add it to the list of things to add to the program’s dictionary that we are improving. I also cannot find any example of ‘shokueru’, but was able to find ‘taberu’, which is a bit strange unless one of the other staff have done a quick fix for that. Again if you could find a link, we can add it to the program’s dictionary. @Chihiro has already made a sheet of some of the common words that were being mispronounced, and we’ll keep adding to that/fixing that straight away.
Totally understand the concern about the lack of emotion, but for the purpose of reviewing and learning how to recognize words in speech, we feel that this TTS is far better than nothing at all, and in many cases actually even easier than listening to a native, as all syllables are pronounced correctly. My personal gripe with the system is that the actual voice is natural, but, like you stated there is no emotion behind it. I believe that this is a big contributor to the ‘not quite right’ feeling that some sentences can give. We can actually alter emotions ranging from happy to angry to sad using this software though, so we will eventually also go through and fix the sentences that sound way off.
As mentioned, this program itself has a built in dictionary that we can save any common mistakes to and then reparse every single sentence again in just a few minutes, so we will be doing this over and over until we have caught the vast majority of the errors.
Unrelated personal opinion - I have been listening to these for about an hour and a half a day just on shuffle while I go for a walk around the neighborhood. They are an excellent way to train your ears, regardless of whether or not it is a real person. TTS will not stop anyone from mastering a language, and the pros far outweigh the cons. (Provided that the sentences are actually 100% correct, and the only thing missing is the human touch)
Please do not take this as disagreeing with your opinion at all. What you have said is totally valid and I think a lot of people will agree. I just wanted to make its value clear from the perspective of a student who is more interested in blasting their ears with Japanese and polishing their listening, rather than who is actually speaking.
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