PSA: disable all Japanese transliteration, use text-to-speech

[cspotcode]

As far as I can tell, LingQ’s transliteration should be completely disabled, because it’s often wrong, and the text-to-speech engine can pronounce words correctly only when it’s disabled. Trust the voice, not LingQ’s annotations.

If you leave transliteration enabled, the voice engine is given the (often incorrect) transliteration, meaning you learn the wrong sound for kanji, potentially the wrong pitch accent or emphasis. (?)

Here is an example:

The transliteration is incorrect, it says “gai” but the proper pronunciation is “mochi”

In the sidebar I have intentionally disabled transliteration to force the voice engine to speak the original kanji.

Pressing S says “mochi” which is correct, not “gai” which is incorrect.

Why does this happen?

When you press S to hear the word spoken, LingQ does one of 3 things depending on your sidebar’s transliteration configuration:

• if you have hiragana transliteration enabled, it voices the chosen transliterated hiragana, so the voice engine does not see the kanji, cannot pick the correct pronunciation
• if you have romaji transliteration enabled, it voices the chosen transliterated romaji, so the voice engine sees the roman alphabet and will even pronounce things using English rules, not Japanese, when it believes the word is English!
• if you have transliteration disabled, it voices the original text w/kanji. This produces the best results, as far as I can tell

I have already reported the romaji issue here: Japanese voice for words incorrect - #6 by cspotcode

Turns out, issues also exist for the hiragana transliteration.

[cspotcode]

Additionally, kanji tells the voice engine which pitch accent to use. When the voice engine speaks hiragana – which it does when you have transliteration enabled – it gets the pitch accent wrong.

Here is an example. Import this lesson into LingQ:

髪 (かみ) - This word means “hair” or “hairstyle”. It has a pitch accent pattern where the pitch rises on the second mora (かみ【LHH】).
神 (かみ) - This word means “god” or “deity”. It has a pitch accent pattern where the pitch remains flat across all morae (かみ【LHL】).

You can confirm the differences in pitch accent by playing the audio samples from native speakers on Jisho:

髪 - Jisho.org

神 - Jisho.org

In LingQ, disable all transliteration and listen to text-to-speech for the two words. Notice the difference: the voice engine understands the kanji.

Now enable transliteration and re-listen to text-to-speech. Notice they are now voiced identically – incorrect! – because LingQ is not voicing the real word, it is voicing the hiragana transliteration.

[D.lfzM]

I agree that the transliterations are incorrect, but the problem runs deeper than that.

First consideration, taken from your example: 街 is pronounced “machi”, not “mochi”, which just goes to show that transliterations would be relevant for those who are not yet accustomed to the sounds of Japanese. That is, if transliterations worked properly. However, beyond that, the TTS is not always correct about how to pronounce a kanji. For example:

The 方 kanji has two pronunciations: “hou” and “kata”. In this context, the correct one is “hou”, but the TTS pronounces it as “kata” instead. I haven’t confirmed, but I suspect lone kanji are always pronounced by their kunyomi reading.

There is also the problem with parsing. Unless you do the tedious work of adjusting every single improper parsing, you will eventually get something like this:

The correct pronunciation is “shukuei”, but if the kanji are parsed separately, the TTS will pronounce it as “yadoei”, probably because it uses the kunyomi reading of each kanji.

I originally wrote a paragraph about possible situations where the TTS would just be wrong, and I’m editing this because I might have encountered one such case.

Every dictionary shows the pronunciation as being “ninnitaeru”, but the TTS pronounces it “ninnikotaeru”.

In short, the transliteration is not reliable, but neither is the TTS, regardless of the script. Pronunciation could be regarded in the same way as the meaning of words, with a LingQ being created if necessary, but even that only really works in the second and third cases, since your LingQ won’t be able to differentiate the context. The only solution that I’ve found to learning how a word is pronounced is more immersion in native material with natural voices.

[cspotcode]

Thanks for replying.

With the AI-enhanced word splitting, do you often get the kind of parsing errors you describe? I’m still a beginner, so I definitely worry when LingQ makes mistakes that I’ll be none the wiser.

I’m getting smarter at avoiding lone kanji, for example if I suspect it’s a counter, I highlight it as a phrase including the preceding digits, to hopefully get a more accurate pronunciation.

[D.lfzM]

The re-splitting reduces the parsing issues, but it has the problem of ruining some special characters, mostly quotations. Regardless of the parsing, what I’d advise is to rely on natural speech. Try to use lessons that contain real voices, guide yourself by what is being spoken instead of the TTS, that’s the only reliable way to learn the pronunciation. You may also try some extension like 10ten or yomichan, they may be helpful for understanding both the parsing and the pronunciation.

[tricyclecc]

I downloaded and tried out Lingq for the first time today. I immediately noticed all of the wrong Furigana.

A couple questions (if anyone is reading this):

• why use a platform that’s teaching incorrectly? Is there something that you just can’t do without as a Japanese learner?
• what’s the best way to use Lingq as an intermediate Japanese learner (N2-ish)?

I have access to plenty of Japanese content at my finger tips and outside my front door. I’m kind of over Anki, so thought maybe this has a redeeming feature for learning new vocab.

[Obsttorte]

LingQ isn’t designed as a “teaching” platform. It is basically a reader that allows the user to build up his own dictionary, including information on how well a word is known. It isn’t created for a specific language, but as a tool to be used with, on the long run, any language. So language specific characteristics are not always taken into account.

In regards to Furigana I would either do as suggested by @D.lfzM or use the dictionary, which usually contains the proper pronounciation. You can write that into the translation, too.

LingQ is an all in one package that’s biggest benefits imho are that

• newly imported content will show you the amount of unknown or not fully familiarized words based on you markings. This can be helpful for judging on the difficulty before starting to read a text
• if you have encountered a word before but can’t remember its meaning anymore, accessing the translation is simple done by clicking on it
• it comes with quiet some additional features that are nice … when they work

Overall there is nothing that is good especially for learners of Japanese, as it wasn’t designed for that purpose. But it can become a useful tool after using it for a while and having built up some LingQ’s.

The staff has a relatively generous refunding policy. So maybe you just give it a shot and decide after a while whether it is a good supplement for your learning routine.

[tricyclecc]

Thank you - I appreciate your reply. I’ve looked into the platform a bit more but it’s quite a financial commitment.

I also have not been able to get importing to work - error “AI features can take some time. Try again later.”

Nor does the AI splitting work “Re-splitting Lesson Failed. Please try again.”

Is this something that is being worked on or are these features just not usable? Importing native content would be very helpful, but seems it has been broken for a while? I tried Youtube and Netflix.

[cspotcode]

"AI features can take some time. Try again later.” actually means that it is working, but you can’t view the lesson yet because the AI is still doing splitting in the background. It’s a misleading message. But if you wait a few minutes and try to view the less, it will work. As annoying as it is to wait, word splitting is way better with AI than without, so I keep it turned on.

[Obsttorte]

@cspotcode

"AI features can take some time. Try again later.” […] It’s a misleading message.

Why so? It is a bit unprecise at best (“later” could mean anything), but pretty clear in its meaning.

@tricyclecc

Is this something that is being worked on or are these features just not usable? Importing native content would be very helpful, but seems it has been broken for a while? I tried Youtube and Netflix.

I’ve never used the ai based word splitting, so I can’t comment in detail on that specific feature. But importing from YouTube does only seem to work for videos that have subtitles, now. More or less, at least, guessing from the comments. You are not neccessarely reliant on that feature, as their are other means to import that stuff.

You are correct that the app comes with quiet some costs. I for one wouldn’t expect not working stuff to be fixed soon, though. Maybe it just stays like this.

It is actually quiet hard to give a definitive yay or nay on LingQ. I use it as do many others, but I criticize many of its aspects, too, as do many others. It is a bit of a hate love relationship. It is really a subjective decision and also depending on your financial situation, of course.

[tricyclecc]

Why so? It is a bit unprecise at best (“later” could mean anything), but pretty clear in its meaning.

The fact that I didn’t understand it shows that it’s easy to misinterpret. I see now that those courses were processed later. The key issue is that “Try again later” implies that it didn’t work. “Try again” isn’t correct in this case because it’s referring to the import, which doesn’t need to be tried again.

AI features can take some time. Try again later. → AI importing in progress - please check back later.

Or: AI features take time to process. Please check back later.

I’ve decided to give it a try. Let the love/hate relationship begin.