Voice recognition and Kanji

It has happened a few times during my Japanese lessons when I have been asked to test my pronunciation with my microphone. (Example, Play It! Hear It!Say It! Extra Vocabulary!)

I've attempted to pronounce the word(s) correctly however I receive an error.  The Voice to Text software interprets what I have said and shows me with green text where I have correctly pronounced it and red text where I have said something incorrectly. 

In many instances it generate Kanji, which might be correct however at no point in my course have I yet learned how to understand Kanji, nor is Kanji pronunciation based so showing me an incorrect Kanji does not help me to understand how I've incorrectly pronounced a word.  It leads to a frustrating experience. 

The most recent example would be the term kaitenzushi.  I can see how it is written with kanji and kana, and both with kana only and romaji only as I have those options selected.  When I speak I am given 回転寿司 as my answer which is incorrect, but also not helpful.

Kaitenzushi has never worked for me. I have to pronounce it Kaitensushi to get it to register correctly.

Voice recognition not correctly picking up on kaitenzushi was not an isolated issue to that word but at the time of my posting was the most recent example.  There have been others since, and it is interesting to note it is almost always when saying an isolated word, however when said as part of a sentence it seems to be much more lenient.  

A recent example being じょうず - when asked to say it in the extra vocabulary section of Lesson 2.1 It will fail and give me a myriad of different answers about 9 times out of 10, however when saying as part of a sentence (example: あなた　ほど　じょうず　じゃない　です！) I get the green all is good 100.

This is regardless of whether I have Rocket Record difficulty set to Easy or Hard (I have it set to hard at present).

That is exactly my experience too John. There comes a point when you know it's not a problem with your own pronunciation. I think they need to have staffers that know Japanese go through and try all of these and see the problems for themselves! 

Well, we're about 1 ½ weeks later and I'm about ready to stop using the pronunciation test for isolated words as it continues to be more of a matter of hope and prayer that the software recognizes I'm even speaking, and if it does that it spits out anything even remotely close to what it was that I had tried to pronounce.  

Phrase?  No problem.  Two or three characters?  Oh, I'm sorry, we didn't catch that.  Anything that ends with ru or ju?  Oh, I guess you actually said ri or chi so you fail.  Maybe we'll throw in some kanji so you literally have no idea as to what we think you said.  

I have been through the troubleshooting.  It does not help.  I have toggled from Hard voice recognition to Easy several times to try and find some mystery setting where it might work.  It does not help.  

I'll continue soldiering on, because other than this I'm enjoying my experiences, but this feature simply does not work as intended.

Edit: I give up.  If anyone can do the Numbers exercise under Survival Skills from beginning to end with less than 50 voice recognition errors, they've some kind of magic.  If it doesn't straight up apologize for not catching it, or asking me to check the FAQ, it'll butcher it into something completely nonsensical.  Saying Ni-Sen got interpreted as Nissan, or Lisa, or a myriad of other things.  Roku Juu got interpreted first as OK, then as Prodigy.  PRODIGY!  HOW?  At this point it is more of a test of patience then a test of pronunciation.

Edit 2: Will make an attempt on a different device to see if it helps with voice recognition/accuray.

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) JohnH197 and EarleyGrave,

I'm really sorry to hear that you are still having issues. I can completely understand how frustrating this must be!

Are you having issues on the app or the desktop version? Or are you having the same issues across both? Also, if you're using the app, are you using IOS or android? 

The voice recognition systems for the app and the desktop version, work slightly differently, so there may be something happening there. There's also a few differences between the IOS version and android version of the app too. 

If you can provide me with a few more details, I can pass this information on to the IT team and see what they come back with. Any information on specific words, phrases, sounds, etc. that aren't working would be great to know too (I've made a note that じょうず (jōzu) and る (ru) and じゅ (ju) ending words aren't working correctly).

I'll also have a look around to see if there are any other users experiencing the same issues. 

Again, we're really sorry that you're having problems and hopefully we can fix this so you don't have to deal with this issue anymore!

In the mean time please let me know if you come across any other issues or have any other questions. 

勉強を頑張ってください！ (Benkyō o ganbatte kudasai!) 

I have been using the desktop version through the rocket languages website so far, though tomorrow I will try using the Android app and see if it works any better.  Off the top of my head I can't think of any specific words that got horribly mangled other than what I had mentioned previously.  As far as getting a “Sorry, I didn't catch that. Please try again” message, those tend to happen with an alarming regularity on short words for instance it might have an issue with　

ごじゅう　but there would likely be no issue as はっぴゃく　ごじゅう

I apologize if my earlier message seemed overly harsh.  I am trying (and will continue to try), but it has proven to be a frustrating experience not knowing whether it is poor pronunciation, poor voice recognition, or both.  I appreciate the patience and will update again tomorrow when I attempt the same exercise (Numbers) using the Android App.

I still periodically have issues with some voice recognition, though I've stopped being bothered by it.  After 3 attempts I pass it off as either my pronunciation being poor or otherwise not recognized by the system.  Every now and again there is a silly example where I am scored incorrectly by no fault of my own.  Not necessarily a specific example, because it has been awhile and I cannot remember the exact entry but I was doing the calendar exercise and I think it wanted me to say March.  Months are easy enough in Japanese, Number of the Month followed by the word Month.  March being San Gatsu.  So I say it (how I believe is correct) and the system accepted by answer as 3月.  Which in so far as I understand is correct.  Except that they were looking for 三月.  While pronounced and meaning the same because one instance used the arabic numeral 3 and the answer key was looking for the kanji symbol for 3 I was awarded half points.

This was for illustrative purposes only, I don't remember the exact month, and it has since accepted my answer so the issue is not 100% replicable.  

In general, the solution was a personal one in that I need to not let myself get hung up on small, comparatively inconsequential issues.  Don't sweat the small stuff ^_^

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) JohnH197,

Thanks for updating me on the issues you are having. 

I have passed this information on to both the Japanese team and the technical team to take note of. 

Again, please do let us know if you experience any other issues. 

勉強を頑張ってください！ (Benkyō o ganbatte kudasai!)

The voice recognition has been a terrible experience with short words. I'm stuck for more than 10 minuts trying to get “e” (picture) recognized. It always happens on short words like “mo”, “to”, “ie”, etc.

こんにちは (Konnichiwa) Joao231,

Thank you for getting in touch. 

We're sorry for the inconvenience this issue is causing you. Our IT team is aware of a voice recognition issue where short or single-syllable words are not being picked up correctly and are working on a fix for this. 

In the meantime, please let us know if you have any other questions or issues!

勉強を頑張って下さい！ (Benkyō o ganbatte kudasai!)