Alternative English Pronunciations

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Long time replyer first time thread starter.

I am a native (Australian) English speaker, which the further I get into Wanikani the more I realise means I am not a native American speaker. I can accept that the spelling on this site is American and that doesn’t affect my learning; however, some of the reading mnemonics do (I also understand that sometimes the mnemonic is stretched to fit the spelling as well as the sound 案 is Ann with the plan which serves double duty, even though あん is pronounced more like arn in Arnold).

Off the top of my head:

  • the mnemonic for さ is ‘saw’ but to me ‘saw’ would make more sense as the reading for そう a more accurate (for me) pronunciation would be really hard to think of :slight_smile: perhaps sa like San Jose (I realise American’s pronounce San like sand but
  • the mnemonic for そう is ‘sew’ but the pronunciation is ‘so’ like soft not ‘so’ like sober.

I know there are a few others I’ve forgotten, but these are the two I get wrong more often than not, simply because the mnemonic sticks in my head but when I type it out it’s wrong.

To my suggestion, an additional toggle in settings to use “American” or “English” pronunciations, or even to use ‘Standard’ or ‘custom’ mnemonics first.

I know there is already an option to add your own notes etc, but this displays after the Wanikani ones and my brain still reads both. So maybe even something to toggle which is displayed first. Whilst a user-script could do this I think it would be better as base functionality so that the care and attention that goes into the mnemonics is consistent for all users.

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You realize Americans will read your pronunciation notes and basically say “yeah, そう and sew and the ‘so’ in sober sound the same.”

Usually people complain about かい from coyote too.

I don’t mean to sound discouraging, but this has been asked many times and doesn’t seem to have much inertia with the WaniKani staff.

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Even as an American, I’ve looked at a fair number of the pronunciation mnemonics and though, ‘nah that doesn’t work, they don’t alike at all’, and just come up with something else.

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I’m with @DaisukeJigen.

I’m also American and still disagree with certain mnemonics in the same way. I just make my own in those cases.

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Of course, that’s why I am suggesting a toggle rather than “change everything to suit me”

I like かい as coyote :slight_smile:

I did a search to see if it had already been asked, maybe my search terms were off, but it doesn’t hurt to ask again.

I could teach myself Javascript and write a user-script to override the mnemonic with the user notes.