MacOS and Safari - speech recognition?

I am using a 2019 MacBook Pro and Safari 14.0.2 for Rocket French. I would rather not use Chrome.

I continue to receive the error:  “Whoops! We were unable to transcribe your recording. Please try again.”

Is there a special setting?

Thanks,

Kirk

Hi Kirk.  FYI, I use MaBook Air, and tried Safari, but have found it is slicker using Chrome, so use the latter only for Italian, the same bring the case with Duolingo and Memrise.  Chris

I have a brand new MacBook running the latest Safari and I am also having this problem.

Would rather not use Chrome as there is currently some integration issues with the new silicon processors.

Anyone have a solution?

Thanks - Kirk

I use Safari and don't have too much trouble as long as my microphone is picking up well. Sometimes for shorter phrases it will error but generally it works fine.

But I have the app on my iPhone as well and I generally have more success doing the speaking exercises in the app. I find it can generally recognize what I'm saying better.

I am still unable to get it to work on my laptop, however does work using Safari using a Late-2013 Imac desktop.

Any help would be appreciated, I do not want to use Chrome.

Thanks,

Kirk

I'm having a problem with ‘p’s and ‘be’s. Whenever I speak it seems to automatically pick the wrong one up. It's driving me nuts. I'm on my iMac and I'm updated, and using Chrome. I couldn't get anything to work properly on Safari -.-

I doubt that's an issue of the browser. It could be a bad microphone, or just over-enunciating the words (B could easily sound like P that way).

The problem I'm getting is that it outright ignores certain words… in 2.5 (module 1) when I have to say “du soir”, it ignores the “soir” altogether. But it happens on mobile and on desktop so I don't think it's a browser issue.

After 1000 hours on the platform, I could write a dissertation on the things that I've learned to try in order to satisfy the recorder. Sometimes it takes forever to get it to accept a 15-20 word sentence, but some of the worst cases are when it won't recognize the little teensy 5-letter phrases. I've learned to just let the latter go. One of the most unfortunate aspects of the recorder is how easily it gets confused and confuses you along with it. It's very often the case that, where there appears to be trouble with your recording, it's not where the problem actually is. It just seems to be trying to make sense of what it thinks you said, and goes bonkers over it. Nevertheless, that's where you need to start.

devbanana, make sure you're hitting that R in soir. Don't just say swa. It really dislikes lazy R's anywhere in the word. You really need to push some air through your throat every time.

Hint: Try closing your mouth down to a smaller opening. This can make a significant difference in your pronunciation. Also learn to sound through your nose when appropriate. 90% of the words, bon and on , are said through your nose. It's a very strong sound that has nothing to do with the English “N”. More like the English, “bong”, but w/o the “g”. On the other hand, en, is somewhere between the English “on” and “own”.

Hint: It also gets confused by you hanging too long on a given sound, like at the end of the word. When you're recording sentences, many, many times you will find that just speaking more quickly is the key, and I think a lot of that is cutting out “long” sounds.

Hint: It's not necessarily looking for you to imitate the tutor audio precisely. A very unfortunate example which I've experienced many times is that it won't accept a proper liaison - one that is not only in the tutor audio, but should also be in your recording. And very rarely does it let you run words together the way the tutor audio often does. Learn to enunciate clearly, correctly and quickly - but not too quickly. Sometimes you have to say each and every 2-letter word quickly, but very much on its own.

Hint: On the other hand, try imitating the “lilt” of the tutor audio - every little nuance. Sometimes it makes a difference.

Hint: Try going to the Google French/English translator and listening to how the mechanical voice says a phrase that you're having difficulty with. It can also be helpful because you can excise phrases from longer sentences, especially when the tutor audio mashes everything together. But be sure to include complete phrases as the pronunciation (lilt) may very well change depending on the context. You just might get some valuable insight there.

And on and on …

Robert

Hi Robert,

Thanks for the tips. I've tried hitting the R very hard before, I have no issues with the R in other words so don't think that's it. But I've tried overemphasizing it anyway.

While my accent is obviously not perfect, I tend to have a decent accent. I'll tell you one way I verify:

On my Mac, I set up dictation to listen for French. So when the speech recognition tool is giving me particular difficulty, I check if dictation can understand me. If it can, then I figure it's good enough. Sometimes there's a tiny issue to fix that I realize while working with dictation and so I fix it, and sometimes that helps. But sometimes it understands me perfectly well but yet the tool still won't.

With “du soir”, I tried speaking it quickly, slowly, emphatically, more naturally, every way I could think of and it just doesn't pick up the “soir”. That tends to only happen on my phone for some reason though, on my computer it picks it up 80% of the time. It's such a strange, random issue.

devbanana, it sounds to me like you are definitely going out of your way to do everything possible. And, yes, I've also noticed some slight tendency for a particular dictation to work better on one machine than the other. I've also suspected that it works better on the same machine several hours later.

Three of the best indications that it's probably the technology and not you are, the  perpetually missing word, the gang of red letters that mysteriously move around in your sentence when you change one syllable, and the one consonant, usually at the beginning of a word, that it can't get right. The latter is especially prevalent in short-short phrases. There is clearly something about that dictation that it just can't process.

All of which brings me to the point that I've emphasized to folks a number of times in these kinds of discussions, and that is, don't let it undermine your efforts. Give it your best, and then move on. It's a valuable tool, but it should never become a source of frustration. I have to remind myself of that every day. Laughing at it helps. Name-calling would be more rewarding if it could process it. Haha.

It sounds to me like your heart is really in it . Keep up the hard work!

Robert