Hello Durtles.
We have an upcoming update you all should be aware of. In the next week we will expose another voice actor to the public. Her name is Kyoko and she will be the new default voice going forward. If you prefer Kenichi then don’t fret! You can switch back to his voice if that is what you want.
Kyoko has been available via our API version 2 for quite a while now. But it’s nice she is now able to make her debut to the population at large.
In addition to releasing Kyoko to y’all we have made some fundamental changes on how pronunciation audio works. I’ll detail the changes in this post.
For those who use the audio autoplay option during lessons and/or reviews you are able to select a default voice for the autoplay.
It is also a good time to mention many browsers (Firefox specifically) are now implementing autoplay opt-in by default. This means you’ll need to whitelist the site to allow autoplay to work. It is a great change, but unfortunately it adds an extra step for those who want to use autoplay.
If you find the audio is not autoplaying after turning on the autoplay settings on our site then review your browser’s autoplay media settings. Here is how to navigate Firefox’s settings (see the Site Settings section). For Chrome you’ll need to navigate to chrome://settings/content/sound.
On the vocabulary details pages we have updated the reading listings to accommodate the new voice actors.
For those who are observant you’ll notice there is pronunciation audio for all readings listed for 九. Up until this point we only provided pronunciation audio for one reading if the vocabulary has multiple readings.
Not anymore. After years of going to speech therapy the Crabigator has leveled up.
Just a couple things to note:
- Most vocabulary will have both voice actors available.
- Most vocabulary with multiple readings will have pronunciation audio for each reading.
- Not all vocabulary have all the pronunciation audio. It is mainly due to our fault for missing it. Didn’t want to hold the release back so we will move forward with what we have so far. I have listed what is missing at the end of this post.
- Missing audio will not have any audio player displayed for the reading and voice actor.
Due to this new offering of pronunciation audio for the other readings we have made pronunciation audio autoplay in lessons and reviews a smidge smarter.
In both reviews and the lessons quiz, for vocabulary with multiple readings, if you had autoplay on or clicked on the pronunciation audio button after answering a vocabulary reading correctly you would hear a correct reading. It wasn’t necessarily the audio of the reading you just typed in, but it was a legitimate pronunciation of a reading belonging to the vocabulary.
Now you will hear the audio for the reading you answered correctly with.
However there are two caveats:
- If we have the audio for the reading, but not for your default voice actor, we’ll play the pronunciation audio from a different voice actor.
- If we have no audio for the reading then no audio will be available for autoplay or the audio button. Note the icon change for the pronunciation audio button to reflect this in the visual below.
In the subject information tab you have access to all the available audio.
During lessons when you are introduced to new material you’ll also have access to all the audio available. If autoplay is activated one of the pronunciations will autoplay when transitioning to the reading slide.
And lastly, for our API version 2 users, the new audio will be available for consumption once the audio has been uploaded.
I think that covers about everything. Direct all questions here and we will answer them promptly.
Happy Kanji Learning.
P.S. We have open-sourced the old vocabulary pronunciation audio.
Missing audio
The following are vocabulary readings we do not have audio for yet. This isn’t an exhaustive list, so there may be more missing. Everything listed is missing both Kenichi and Kyoko audio, unless otherwise noted.
近々 【ちかじか】
身体 【からだ】
連中 【れんぢゅう】
連中 【れんちゅう】 (missing Kenichi audio)
崎 【みさき】
国境 【くにざかい】
眼 【まなこ】
火傷 【かしょう】
粉 【こ】
幾度 【いくたび】
尊い 【たっとい】
貴い 【たっとい】
縮まる 【ちじまる】 (missing Kenichi audio)
眼鏡 【がんきょう】
うなぎ丼 【うなぎどんぶり】
衣 【きぬ】
牧場 【まきば】
満潮 【みちしお】
瞬く 【まばたく】
洞穴 【ほらあな】 (missing Kyoko audio)
肯く 【うなづく】 (missing Kenichi audio)
