Willardsdaughter wrote: ↑Wed Dec 07, 2022 12:55 am
I also hate the AI voices and had to stop using Duolingo altogether when they appeared in Japanese.
I have been using Busuu for French for one year:
viewtopic.php?p=36982-language-app-benchmarks#p36982
viewtopic.php?p=39435-language-app-benchmarks#p39435
The JP courses look great (wanted first to say "sick" for using as extensive - can I??) too.
- First "A1" course (obviously they took that CEFR grouping over from English and European languages - of course they don't follow JLPT): 154 lessons + 15 Review
- Second A2 course: 154 lessons + 17 Review
- Some more B1 and B2 lesson content.
AFAIK they're constantly working on the JP courses for restructerings and extension.
See the Google Play store reviews.
For French often English translations were missing, but there's an translator app available on Android to read out full sentences (compatible with Accessibility) if that is the case.
Thankfully the Android TTS engines are very nice, you can control the speed and no high pitched screams.
For those few sentences with missing French audio I regularly made use of Android's native "Select to Speak" TTS Accessibility feature so I restarted the course more than once.
Works pretty good on the Busuu Android app.
Summary:
One resting year of no comic characters, no animations, no fake cartoon AI voices
(which honestly aren't THAT bad on our Duolingo Brazilian Portuguese course as Junior is only a mild version; English is way more nerve-racking; never heard good things about more heavy Spanish or French voice versions where at least 2+ are not usuable; new voices from PT stories like Junior or Lilly go much more onto my nerves, at least 2-3: Overacting, squeaking, shrill high, overplayed).
I saw the complaints on the Duolingo community JP sub forum before in January-March 2022, probably also sporadically in 2021 when they got first introduced.
So I'm not surprised that you guys had to stop using JP all together on Duolingo if anything gets close to other languages and new bad AI voices.
As I said, I only have the milder TTS versions in the Brazilian Portuguese course so my ears don't hurt that much and my brain is not behaving like it would be on an electric shock.
BUT: The Pt-Br rules are often wrong.
So the new AI voices mispronounce words in sentences, drop end consonants (like French is regularly doing it) which will just very confuse a PT beginner.
So far the TTS voice errors have not been fixed. I see them more often on Duolingo here and there.
If you don't like Busuu, at least pay for LingoDeer and LingoDeer Plus.
AFAIK they are leading in Asian languages.
Or try the LingoLegend game.
Again, only using it for French, but I see many gamers in the two Adventure places with Japanese, Chinese Mandarin or Korean languages added in their profile.