Comments on: Chinese Project Notes 10: Big Developments (Anki, Text-To-Speech, Cantonese, Victory Calendar)

By: Raphael

Raphael — Sun, 25 Oct 2015 00:03:15 +0000

Does anyone know about a good Korean TTS? I’ve been using imtranslator, but find it to be too robotic.

By: Anki • Animefangirl! | Animefangirl!

Anki • Animefangirl! | Animefangirl! — Tue, 04 Nov 2014 12:19:23 +0000

[…] you to upload pictures, sound and other files, not just text. Based on the experiments in this AJATT post, I managed to obtain (ahem) a text-to-speech program called NeoSpeech, and I’ve been using it […]

By: Lane

Lane — Sun, 03 Feb 2013 01:32:28 +0000

I didn’t know about ‘victory calendars’, but I essentially have one. I’ve got 3 years left in school and I’ve got a trip to Japan planned every December. I’ve got a spreadsheet with a line for each week and I have different columns for different weekly sentence addition rates (80,100,120,etc). I tend to add 120 a week. I have a creeping section where I track how many I’ve done with a black background and I have my target for this week in a red background.

It’s seriously motivating to see where I *could* be at x, y, and z dates in the future (with highlighting on my ‘test periods’ when I’ll be in Japan at the end of each year). If I’ve done 80-100, then “all I have to do” for that extra benefit down the line is a few dozen more sentences this week. It’s a tradeoff I’m always willing to make with myself… especially considering where you described your skills after 7500 sentences and where tkyosam described his after 8700.

I mean getting jobs that rely on your language ability is a legit measuring stick in my book and in your case as well as in tkyosam’s, you landed jobs well before the 10k mark. So here’s shooting for 10k and we’ll see what shakes out. (I’m shooting for 800 this week and already seeing improvement)

Cool advice. Cool blog. Thanks for sharing the wealth.

By: Miss Language Learning

Miss Language Learning — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 20:44:21 +0000

Gah, you just reminded me that I absolutely have to learn Chinese.

By: Puchatek

Puchatek — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 02:27:56 +0000

I know this thread has been dead for a while, but I found a really neat (and probably not all that new) TTS solution for Anki and felt it’s worth sharing should anyone stumble upon this page again (like I did not that long ago), There’s an Anki plugin called Google TTS or similar that lets you very easily turn Japanese (and other) sentences to mp3s. It requires connection to a network, and when it screws up pronunciation (i.e. 中 as なか and not じゅう when it really should be じゅう) you can’t do anything about it, but it’s free, straightforward and hassle free.

By: Burning Bridges or: Options, Their Limits, and Their Possibilities « Celestial Celsius

Sun, 26 Jun 2011 00:21:36 +0000

[…] became fluent in Japanese. Not because of his methods, but because of the situation that dictated his methods: Indeed, one thing that drove me to go all the way with Japanese was that […]

By: How Long Should I Study Every Day? How to Schedule It?

How Long Should I Study Every Day? How to Schedule It? — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 18:58:16 +0000

[…] also highly recommend you check out something that Khatzumoto over at All Japanese All The Time posted about called a ‘Victory Cal… that he uses to motivate himself by giving himself a deadline upon which he “achieves […]

By: Jonathan

Jonathan — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 09:01:40 +0000

khatzumoto,
Your blog is awesome and of course you are good looking and I want to have your babies.

At any rate, I think you and I are cut from the same cloth. I’m currently living in HK and am learning Canto since “you will never learn it; too hard”, blah, blah, blah.

If there are any Canto resources that you can share, I’d be greatful.

Keep up the awesome work.
Jonathan

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 04:15:29 +0000

I have some experiences with text to speech software programs, I recommend Panopreter Plus
(www.panopreter.com) to Windows 7 or vista users, The software reads text and converts the text to mp3 and wav files with the voice of Microsoft Anna. Best of all, it’s easy to use and useful to language learners.

By: KC101 – Vocab Section « Chicagoseoul's Blog

KC101 – Vocab Section « Chicagoseoul's Blog — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 02:20:38 +0000

[…] /chinese-project-notes-10-big-developments-anki-text-to-spe… […]

By: WangSen

WangSen — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:11:23 +0000

Hey Chinese learners…I have a simple question for you guys (and gals).
I have been learning my hanzi with Anki. I have done pretty good sticking to it with the occasional life interruptions, but I have tried to keep those to a minimum. Once I stopped for a month, so I reset Anki and started from the beginning. Now I have 3000 hanzi down well. My question is rather simple. Instead of continuing to 4000 hanzi, does anyone see something wrong with starting to do sentences and just adding new hanzi as I come across them from this point on?
I think it actually maybe beneficial since I would be sure that hanzi I would learn this way would be learned in context. Any thoughts?
Thanks all…and thanks to Katz..

By: David

David — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 04:35:02 +0000

Hey Khatz, I wanted to let you how much of an inspiration you have been to my Japanese studies and methods. But there was actually one question regarding this post that I wanted to ask. Where did you find that Japanese voice for the TTS that you gave an example for? It sounds phenomenal but I can’t seem to find it on the link to the website that you provided. All I’ve found is Kyoko and I don’t think it’s the same and the one you showed.

Kyoko:
nextupdownloads.com/scansamples/Kyoko.mp3

By: Nostrum

Nostrum — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 03:13:57 +0000

Hey, I am using this victory calendar idea for Japanese, and I was wondering if anyone could tell me what appropriate headings for each part of it would be in Japanese… I don’t trust myself with something I’ll be looking at so often :P. The current headings in english are:
Victory Calendar
Date / Input / Countdown / Notes
Review / Reading / Media / Add / Other [I have a lot of columns yes]
and inside the chart I have “break” on certain activities for certain days.

I was considering:
date: 日付
input: インプット活動
notes: 注釈
break: 休日

but
countdown: not sure what word to use
reading: not sure what form to put it in, if I want it to be a noun.
and the other words as well.
media, add [cards], other, need help for those too.

any help in translating those words for my chart would be much appreciated.

By: Markk

Markk — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 03:08:20 +0000

Heyy thar =D

I’ve stumbled across your site and I’ve been applying it to my learning Cantonese :] I never really liked learning it much, cause all the stuff was reaaal boring: “你好嗎” “我好好。你呢？” 你呢” Stuff like that aha. I like your concept of “learn stuff you enjoy” because, in the end, im probably gonna be talking more about stuff I want to talk about than “Good day to you Mr. Wong. It is very sunny today. And how is your wife?” yaddayaddayadda. But what I really want to know is how long did it take you before you became really proficient at hearing and distinguishing/ speaking the tones? I’m having reaaal problems with the low-falling tone…
Thanks :]

By: ~

Tue, 26 Aug 2008 16:11:34 +0000

Wow, making the reservations and buying tickets before you even learned Japanese… that takes guts. o__o I think I’ll try that Victory-calendar thing. But what’s wrong with the BoPoMoFo? ;-;

By: Dryope

Dryope — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 18:19:54 +0000

Hi! Wonderful site. I’m a Mandarin-learner, and I’m trying to get from “high intermediate” to “fluent” which is tough to do. Most textbooks/classes are too easy, and it’s really just a matter of exposure at this point. Your method is the best to getting there, I think, and I’m going to start implementing it.

I also love your victory calendar. I don’t know if anyone else has asked you this, but would you ever consider posting it for download here? I started making my own, but adding all the days and such for 180 weeks looked daunting. (I’m due for a contribution to your tip jar, but I’d be happy to throw in a little extra for the doc, too.)

By: andy

andy — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 18:58:19 +0000

I’m using your method for French. As to the SRS length, how long is 10 Chinese characters? Does that mean that I should limit myself to 10 French words or 10 letters? Thanks.

By: Jasper

Jasper — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 03:43:51 +0000

Khatzu…I love you =]
I’m sure this is gonna work…thanks so much for making such a place…
Rosetta Stone got nothin on you =]

By: AwkwardMap

AwkwardMap — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 21:52:10 +0000

I’ve been doing this (kana to kanji) for the past three weeks and it’s just a lot more fun. I’m playing a game here where I have to place the kanji in the correct spots all while still producing the kanji from memory (and not just repeatedly looking at the sentence as I write with the straight sentence method). I’ve not gotten TTS software yet (no money for it!), but that should change in a few weeks and then we’ll see.

The image hack is also, yeah, the best way to learn nouns and such that I can just about almost get, but not quite just by the definition. Words like 衛星 and 頭蓋 are really easy to grasp with an image staring you in the face.

So, yes, I think it very much so is worth doing with Japanese as well. I convert my failed cards into these along with the long ones when I break them up.

By: doviende

doviende — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 13:05:58 +0000

Anyone know of some good collaborative learning chinese sites? is there anywhere where people are trading anki decks and recommending videos n stuff? sounds like japanese is all cool and popular, but i haven’t found any chinese-learning communities online yet.

i’d like to work on building a nice deck of chengyu (idioms) and regular sentences, etc. ideas?