LipSurf - WaniKani Voice Dictation. Review while you eat, do chores, etc

All the WK issues were fixed in the latest v3.11.2 FYI.

Exciting news!

@okonomichiyaki has created LipSurf plugins for Bunpro and Kitsun.io - so now you can learn grammar and more vocab hands-free just using your voice. You can try out the plugins right now! 🎉 New Bunpro, KaniWani, Kitsun.io plugins now available! - Official - LipSurf

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That’s pretty awesome! Thanks @okonomichiyaki :grin:

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I’ve tried LipSurf for the first time a few hours ago and the experience was great on WaniKani, almost flawless. It is indeed a great tool to improve japanese speech and I’m pretty sure it will also help with kanji recognition in the long run because of that.

Unfortunately I didn’t have the same good experience with Bunpro. It worked great with most particles, but sometimes it didn’t register my answer at all, even though the voice recognition worked fine and was 100% correct. From what I’ve seen it only happened when there were more than 3 characters, but it could be something else that I’m not aware of.

Also, I would love to have a KameSame plugin. I use it frequently after WaniKani sessions and it would be a huge help as well.

Thank you for your great work. It is really appreciated! :pray:

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Thanks for trying out the Bunpro plugin, sorry it’s not working perfectly. I haven’t used Bunpro very much yet (I needed to make the plugin first :joy:) so I haven’t seen very much content. There are definitely grammar items where the plug-in will fail to work. I’m aware of one already (わりに which expects a particle の in certain cases that trips up the plugin) and I’m able to reproduce that issue. If you’re willing to share the specific grammar item that you’re having trouble with that will be very helpful in debugging the issue. Feel free to DM me.

There’s also two quirks of the speech recognition I’ve noticed:

  • the particle “は” needs to be pronounced “ha” and not “wa”
  • “です” needs to be pronounced “desu” (two syllables)

There may be more quirks like this I will discover as I continue using the app + plugin, if anyone finds things like this please share.

I’ve actually begun working on a KameSame plugin this week. It is in a rough state but hopefully can be beta tested soon. @mikob look out for an email in a few days :smiley:

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Hey @okonomichiyaki, thank you so much for your response.

I’m sorry it took a while for me to reply, but I really appreciate the help and those great news about a KameSame plugin! Hope to hear more about that soon :pray:

Also, I have some new info about BunPro that might be useful.

On my last review session I decided to register every answer that LipSurf would register. This was the result:

  • It worked with “に”, “で” and “あまり”
  • It didn’t work with “ぜんぜん”, “あいません”, “きます”, “たべにいきませんか”, “あいます” and a few more;

Except for “きます”, it really looks like every single word or expression with more than 3 syllables will not be registered whatsoever. I even tried with “あんまり” instead of “あまり” just to make sure that was the case… and it was. LipSurf recognizes what I’m saying perfectly, but it just won’t write it down as an answer.

Just started using Duolingo to see how it works there and it is fine (not perfect, but recognizes full sentences) when compared to BunPro.

Hope this helps you somehow :wink:

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Yes, thank you that is helpful, I can reproduce with the ぜんぜん grammar point and I think I know what’s wrong. I suspect it may be the same as the others you listed, although I wasn’t exactly sure which grammar points for all of them.

If you don’t mind posting the details with a link to the grammar items on Bunpro in one of the other forums, we can avoid cluttering up this one.

Bunpro forum thread
LipSurf forum thread

Thanks for your help testing!

Unfortunately, due to technical reasons related to the implementation of KameSame, I don’t think I can distribute a LipSurf plugin for that site. This is due to intentional design decisions behind the app, out of my control (I was in touch with KameSame dev)

Sorry about that, if something changes I will look into it again

@okonomichiyaki has now made a KaniWani plugin! See here on how to install: 🎉 New Bunpro, KaniWani, Kitsun.io plugins now available! - #2 by Miko - Official - LipSurf

This issue was due to these answers including kanji which my code did not account for. There is a new version of the Bunpro plugin available here which should fix this

Hi Can I use it on my smartphone Chrome?

Not yet. We only have Duolingo support for Android ATM. But the other plugins will be brought over soon. https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.lipsurf

Hello! I’m very interested in trying LipSurf with WaniKani, but would like to try it for a few days before I decide whether to buy a subscription or not, is such a thing possible or do we have to pay up front? Thanks! Keep up the good work :slight_smile:

You can just sign up for a month and if you don’t like it, cancel it. It’s pretty good/stable at this point so I don’t think you’ll be disappointed as long as you use a headset (don’t recommend built-in laptop mics).

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Ok, thanks for the advice. I will try it with a headset and let you know!

v4 has just been released which has WaniKani fixes. Pausing LipSurf while pronunciation is being played back has been fixed and been made an option (if you’re using headphones, it’s not necessary to have the feature on). Enjoy!

@okonomichiyaki has updated the kitsun.io, kaniwani and Bunpro.jp plugins to work with the latest v4+: 🎉 New Bunpro, KaniWani, Kitsun.io plugins now available! - #14 by michiakig - Official - LipSurf
Thank you @okonomichiyaki!

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v4.1.0 has fixes for WaniKani, you will be automatically updated shortly or you can easily force the update to happen immediately.

v4.1.2 has been released with improvements to Japanese among other improvements!

Gave this a go and it works quite well. It definitely struggles with my accent but I think it is about 85% successful. Thanks for the hard work.

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