Voice recognition allowed time

I am working with Rocket Spanish Level 2, Lesson 8.1 - All About Yesterday

My complaint is with the amount of time allowed for repeating the sentences in Lessons Vocabulary section.  Specifically, these sentences.

No, definitivamente no. Las cosas nunca son tan fáciles como uno cree.

Porque nadie quiere saber lo que tú comiste ayer. Bueno, sólo las mamás.

Ah, no sabes lo que te perdiste. Bueno, vamos, entonces. Repite después de mí.

Rocket Spanish DOES NOT ALLOW sufficent time to repeat the sentences.  Whay do I say this?  Good question!  The timer ends before I can repeat the sentence!!!!!!!!!!!   BUT, MOST IMPORTANTLY, when I play back what I am supposed to say, it it MUCH slower than what my “speed” is.  WHY?????

Yes, I have completed all of the above, BUT, by talking so fast that it “blows my mind”!!!!!!!!!!  I do get to 100% complete, and score 100% with promunciation, BUT, WHY DO I HAVE TO SAY IT SO FAST?????????????  IT MAKES NO SENSE AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!!  I am doing all I can to pronounce correctly but I am being “PEANLIZED” by some stupid ass timer!  Im my opinion, it is complete BS!

Please fix this kind of thing!!!!!!!!!!!  Thank you!!

In addition, I am making a POSITIVE recommendation.  PLEASE, take the time that your speaker says the sentence and ADD a few more seconds!  Doesn't that sound like a reasonable and sensible approach?  People are trying to learn a language, not BEATING a stupid insignifcant timer.

What say you?

I am doing those lessons right now and I 100% agree. I have to say it so fast (it feels faster than the native speaker) to get it accepted. It has always been a minor problem becuase you do speak slower than a native speaker but Level 2 really seems to increase sentence length.

Hi Dale, 

We're very sorry to hear about your audio issues. I have sent you an email directly so that we can try and troubleshoot the problem. 

As for the window of time provided to record yourself, this is calculated based on the length of the audio file itself so I will pass this feedback on to the IT team to see if there's any way to increase the window. 

I hope that helps!

Come on now!  How many times do I have to tell you that you DO NOT ALLOW sufficent time for the learner to repeat the phrase, before your system CHOPS IT OFF?????????????????

Rocket Spanish Two.

No es el español formal de la universidad: es el español que se habla en la vida real.

PLEASE, TELL ME HOW MUCH TIME THAT YOU ALLOW THE LEARNER TO SAY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THEN, TELL ME HOW MUCH TIME THAT THE NATIVE SPEAKER SAYS THE PHRASE!

WHEN YOU FINALLY DIG YOUR HEADS OUT OF THAT PART OF YOUR ANATOMY WHERE THE SUN DOES NOT SHINE, YOU WILL FIND THE INCREDIBLY BLATANT ARROGANT ATTITUDE THAT YOU ARE TAKING!!!!!!!!!!!

FIX THIS CRAP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  WHY GIVE THE LEARNER LESS TIME TO REPEAT THE PHRASE THAN THE NATIVE SPEAKER HAS TO SAY IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

GIVE ME ONE REASON WHY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

COME ON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  QUIT HAVING YOUIR HEADS BURIED IN YOUR ANATOMY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  THIS IS NOTHING BUT INCOMPETENCE ON YOUR PART!  THIS IS SIMPLE STOP WATCH WORK!!!!!!!!!!!  OH YEAH, YOUR SOFTWARE GEEKS DON'T CARE!  WELL, I SAY, GET OUT YOU PHONES, TURN ON THE STOP WATCH, AND CHECK IT OUT!

There are numerous examples of minimal extra time in Module 8 and has been reported numerous times by numerous people (including me using the feedback feature to specifically identify some of the problem sentences). I have not found any that are shorter than the native speaker, but some are minimally extra. The sentence above is one of the most complex sentences we have come upon thus far but we only get 1 second longer than the native speaker (6.5 seconds vs 7.5 seconds). Even when I am reading it, I have trouble making it in time. As I said, there are numerous examples of this throughout Module 8.

BTW, I saw in an old forum post (the old forum, not the current one) where the CEO mentioned it was a bug and they fixed it. Seems this is a known problem and a known fix. 

Rocket Languages DO NOT CARE, PLAIN AND SIMPLE!  They only tell the Learner, SUCK IT UP!  WE ARE NOT GOING TO GIVE YOUI THE TIME NEEDED TO SAY IT!  Rocket Languages are ONLY in to ONE THING, RIPPING OFF THE POOR PUBLIC PEOPLE WHO BUY INTO THEIR STHITCK!  THAT DO NOT CARE AND WILL DO NOTHING TO SOLVE OBVIOUS PROBLEMS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  GO TO HELL, ROCKET LANGUAGES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well said Al22. I think their product is pretty good and have stuck with it 515 days in a row. But posting multiple posts on multiple different threads in all caps rarely achieves the desired results. Of course, there are always areas to improve on and it can be frustrating. I choose to just ping issues intermittantly that don't seem to be getting fixed.

The other thing we have to remember, we look at one (or a few) languages, but they have many.

Thank you for your posts. Our sincere apologies for the frustration caused by there not being enough time alloted for repeating long phrases. I want to assure you that we do care, and are in the process of working out the best course of action in order to resolve this issue. As mentioned by my colleague AJ, the window of time provided to record yourself is calculated based on the length of the audio file itself. Rather than adding extra time to individual phrases, any changes we make will affect all phrases across all of our language courses, so we need to take care in any decisions we make. Our IT team is currently short-staffed, but we have made this issue a priority, and so hope to have an update for you within the week. In the meantime, if there are any particular phrases you would like to bring to our attention, please don't hesitate to post them here, or send through to the Customer Support team on support@rocketlanguages.com.

But something is obviously wrong with the examples we have given. They are as long or just barely longer than the recordings, so there is obviously a bug (at least with those recordings).

Lesson 2.6

¿Cuántas cosas hay en la maleta?

How many things are there in the bag?

Maleta / suitcase

Bolsa bolso / bag

“Pack your bags” is a leftover phrase from long ago american english, bag(s) is an outmoded word concerning “luggage.” Hobos had literal bags, they haven't been around for maybe 60 or more years. Other than that, bags would be more typical of the depression era and earlier concerning poor people transporting their personal clothing and small posessions in a literal bag.

Modern “urban campers” might utilize some sort of literal bag, but they are more likely to use a stolen shopping cart to transport their stuff around town, and it would be highly unlikely that any of them will be boarding a plane to cancun.

We use the word suitcase for travel luggage, and even with people who cram their clothes into sports bags to travel (I raise my hand, but sports bags are more like suitcases than literal bags), the more understandable word in context of the english phrase in 2.6  would be suitcase.

Every time I hit “How many things are there in the bag?” in 2.6 I responded with la bolsa, not la maleta.

It would be more clear to a learner if the english phrase were “How many things are there in the suitcase?”

AI22, I think the bags discussion might be a regional issue. I grew up in the Midwest and people said bags for luggage all the time, espcially “I'll go get the bags." 

In fact, people I am around are more likely to say luggage than suitcase. Until I read your post, I would have said suitcase is outdated and not used as much anymore. To be sure, I still hear suitcase, but I hear luggage more (and bags maybe more than suitcase).

All that said, I also thought your example was a bad English transaltion. I also responded with bolsa when presented the English and suitcase when presented the Spanish.

I laughed out loud about ¿Tienes heuvos? I had not heard that, but didn't take much imagination to figure out what that means!

AI22

It's funny, I was worried my “bags” thought was because I was old (I am 57) and you were young. Apparently not!

I asked a couple folks in my family and they also were comfortable with bags meaning luggage, but that makes sense since we hang out together. 

The beauty of moving around so much (I also have lived many places - in 4 foreign countries and numerous states over my career) is you learn so many things. Far beyong the US discussion on “pop” vs “soda” vs “soda pop” vs “coke" (to my Atlanta friends). It really makes you appreciate the diversity life can bring.

Another example of even a slight pause in recording and you run out of time:

Well, the last trip that (I) did was with my friend Mario when (we) went fishing.

Level 2

Survival Kit
Around the house

el edredón
the duvet

I have no problem with the concept of researching spanish words and phrases but I shouldn't have to look up the english in a dictionary or thesaurus

I knew what a comforter was when I encountered el edredón in RS, but until I looked it up I thought  what the hell is a duvet?

Using less common or even snooty english words can be confusing to learners

A duvet is actually different than a comforter. They are certainly similar, but they do have differences.

A duvet is two pieces (think pillow and pillow case).

A duvet is not quilted (comforters often are)

A duvet is typically filled with natural material (comforters are often filled with synthetic material)

That said, everywhere I looked, erdredón in Spanish means all of these: quilt, comforter, duvet.

One example at:

https://www.spanishdict.com/translate/erdred%C3%B3n

I did some more looking at it…

“Duvet” is a french derived britanicism rarely used in the US, excepting specialty nook merchants that few to no lower middle class and poor would be patronizing, and a good portion of the better shod portion of the american population probably has no idea of what a duvet is.

Merriam webster:

“COMFORTER sense 2b”

McMillan

“The duvet, which is also known as a continental quilt in the UK, a doona in Australia, a downie in Scotland and a comforter in the US”

Wikipedia

   "A duvet (UK: /ˈdjuːveɪ, ˈduː-/, US: /djuːˈveɪ/;[1][2] from French duvet [dyvɛ] 'down'), usually called a comforter or (down-filled) quilt in U.S. English…

   The term duvet is mainly British,[7] especially in reference to the bedding; when rarely used in US English, it often refers to the cover…."

And memrise, which deals with latin american spanish - I believe with emphasis on the mexican variety - rather than peninsular spanish translates edredón as “comforter.”

The brits would probably be more interested in peninsular spanish than latin american spanish.

I could be wrong, but my guess is few latin americans not in the chauffered limosine set would have any idea of what a bed covering stuffed with eider down is.

Certainly not anyone who's housing involves corrugated iron and a dirt floor.

And most north americans probably won't be getting close enough to latin american wealth to discuss much about bedroom furnishings anyway, and if so, the activity at hand would preclude any fine point debate about what an  “edredón” is.

So maybe to avoid confusion with RS learners “comforter” could be placed alongside “duvet” like some other words in RS lessons.

Lesson 2.8
Action in the Present Tense

Tú necesitas estudiar para la prueba.
You need to study for the exam.

Phrases don't match.

Ella no necesita estudiar para la prueba.
She does not need to study for the test

This phrase, also from 2.8, matches

Mixing up test and exam like this can be confusing for the learner

The first example from above should be

Necesitas estudiar para el examen.

You need to study for the exam.

So that the english and spanish phrases match

I'm not going out of my way to find this stuff and I'm not trying to be a smart ass, it's jumping out at me as I go through level one again.

Alme, I love it.

I grew up middle class in the midwest and I knew what a duvet was, but definitely agree many Americans (used deliberately to encompass a lot of people) would not. In fact, many US residents are probably sleeping with a duvet and don't even know. If you have slept in a Hilton family of hotels (including Hampton Inn), you most likely have selpt with a duvet as most of their hotels use them.

BTW, the Sleep Foundation says, “While some may mistakenly label a duvet as a comforter or vice versa, there are some notable differences between standard duvets and comforters.”  Here is the entire article (and was the first link in my search of duvet vs comforter).

https://www.sleepfoundation.org/bedding-information/duvet-vs-comforter#:~:text=Duvets%20tend%20to%20be%20thicker,re%20often%20not%20as%20warm.

AI22 - Spanish Dictionary (.com) says prueba means  test and exam AND quiz. (My daughter is A2 and only knew prueba as quiz).

Interestingly, DeepL translates “Do you need to study for the test?" only uses “examen” in place of test.

Tienes que estudiar para el examen.

• Necesitas estudiar para el examen.
• Debes estudiar para el examen.
• Hay que estudiar para el examen.

Same for exam and 3 of 4 examples when I put in quiz. It did use prueba one time with quiz.

I know it is AI, but I still found it interesting and drives home the point is there is a lot of flexibility in language and really makes me respect (even more) all the interpreters I have used over my career.

Hi all, 

I wanted to post an update regarding the time allowed by the voice recognition feature of our courses. Our apologies for the delay, but we wanted to let you know that the IT team have increased the length of time that learners have to repeat phrases, which will hopefully mean you are no longer cut off when using Rocket Record. Please try the tricky phrases again, and let us know if you have any further feedback. 

¡Hola a todos!

I'll just jump in here after Margaret to address some of the feedback that has come up in this thread around translations too!

1. No veo “(I) don't see / (I can)not see”

Translating between two languages is always a tricky thing, because often what is meant in one language doesn't really line up word for word with what someone would say to get the same meaning in the other language. No veo is a great example of this! If you look at it literally, it seems to mean "(I) don't see" - and this is absolutely one possible way of translating it. However, it's very common for native Spanish speakers to use sensory verbs (such as ver "to see" or oír "to hear") without poder "can / to be able to" even though what they mean (or what a native English speaker would say to get the same idea across) is that they are not able to see or hear whatever they're talking about. As a result, No veo and No puedo ver can boil down to the same meaning - it's just that the second version is much more explicit than the first.  

We realize that these kinds of differences between Spanish and English can lead to confusion in places like the Reinforcement activities. To try to help with this, we include literal translations for sentences like these and also try to show which parts of the English sentence are missing in the Spanish by putting them in brackets (hence why this sentence is translated as “(I can)not see”). I'll also ask the Spanish team to look into this particular sentence, to see if we can add some clarification about this in the lesson itself!

2. Maleta “suitcase / bag,” ededrón “duvet / comforter,” and prueba “test / quiz / exam / proof”

Translation is also made even trickier by the fact that sometimes a single Spanish word can commonly be used to refer to more than one thing with different names in English (like prueba, which can mean "test," "exam," "quiz," or even "proof"!). And the trickiness is compounded by the fact that native English speakers from different parts of the same country, or from different walks of life, or from different generations, can strongly prefer using one term over another for the same object (like the case of "duvet" and "comforter," or "suitcase" and "bag"). Nevertheless, we try to do our best to be consistent in our translations, and to choose standardized translations that should be understandable to the vast majority of people, if not to absolutely everyone. I'll make a note of the terms you've flagged and will ask our Spanish team to look into them, to make sure we're being as consistent and as understandable as possible. 

If I've missed addressing any of your feedback, my apologies, and please do let me know!

Saludos,

Liss

Thank you Liss