Hi!
What is the status of fixing the pitch in the Japanese audio samples?
This problem and the importance of the pitch have already been mentioned 2 years ago in this forum.

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=64556031

When I use Japanese Skritter I have to turn off the audio altogether, since there are so many words with the wrong pronunciation.

I think this problem should be addressed soon. Or at least the audio should be disabled by default, to avoid misleading beginners with the wrong pronunciation.

Thanks for bringing this up again, it was set aside as a lower priority while we were getting the iOS app out as quickly as we could, but now that's on the list of things to catch up on. I've added a short term fix to my list of things to do.

That's very good news! I'm looking forward to updates.
Also because of Skritter's spaced repetition system, I fear people may end up learning the wrong pronunciation in a deep and irreversible way.

@ MindRui

Any exposure to native Japanese speakers, regardless of how "correct" it is, is beneficial.

Every English teacher of Japanese origin who I have met makes many major mistakes with pronunciation; the children, after hearing me speak a few times, usually correct their speaking and sound better than the teacher after a few lessons. The students who are brand new, however, usually take longer to properly imitate me and usually don't sound better than the other group. You are overstating the importance of “correct” pronunciation.

@icecream

Sorry I can't agree with that.

Throughout my life I've studied many different languages, and I can say that correct pronunciation is EXTREMELY important. Especially in an early stage.

Allowing English teachers with major pronunciation mistakes to teach kids should be considered a serious crime. Luckily, kids are good language learners and they can overcome these problems if they exposed to correct pronunciation. Too bad not all of them have this opportunity and they will have carry these problems for the rest of their lives.

Seriously, I can't stress this enough, proper pronunciation is one of the most important things when learning a language. It makes it more comfortable to talk to native speakers and it gives a big boost the student's confidence.

@MingRui

There are trade-offs in life. In both cases discussed -- wrong pitch accent and subpar English teachers -- suboptimal solutions were found to be good enough. That’s just life.

The Skritter team has more important issues to attend to and the perks of teaching are not good enough to entice more bilingual speakers into the profession. It’s sad but reality.

icecream, MingRui is not talking about things like accents you might have as a non-native English speaker, but about the pitch accents in Japanese. They work like tones in Chinese: if you mispronounce words, they change the meaning. They should be taught in Japanese classes like tones are taught in Chinese classes as they seem to be very tricky.

Imagine a flashcard system for English learners. When a word with the spelling 'd-e-s-e-r-t' pops up, it plays an audio sample that sounds like 'desert' in 'Sahara Desert', even if the word is 'desert' (as in 'to abandon'). It also doesn't differentiate the pronunciations of 'dove' (the bird) and 'dove' (past tense of 'to dive'), 'lead' (the metal) and 'lead' (to guide), 'polish' (as in 'to polish shoes') and Polish (from Poland) etc.
All that because these words have the same spelling. Wouldn't this be a problem that should be fixed as soon as possible?

@ Schnabelhund

I understand the concept of pitch accent.

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=177048502

I get it. It’s not hard to understand. What I am saying is that it’s not a major mistake; it is merely a minor one. I agree it should be fixed but the the problem, though, still remains the same: people who are able to make the necessary changes are busy with other obligations.

@Schnabelhund

Pitch accent is not as important to Japanese as tones are to Chinese. Skritter with the wrong tones would be useless; Skritter with the wrong pitch accent simply needs improvement.

I'm native Japanese and my mom is a Japanese teacher at the German Ministry of Foreign Affairs; trust me, pitch is essential. It's just that Japanese learners often don't realize that. You can find the importance discussed here:

http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=87020919
http://www.skritter.com/forum/topic?id=154981079

Besides, Scott is already saying that this is gonna be fixed; the trade-off is unnecessary. Why are you going against this improvement? If you don't want to study pitch, fine, but different users with different needs also need to be heard.

Not everybody who's studying Japanese lives in Japan and for those who don't, Skritter is one of the few resources of Japanese audio samples. Correcting the pronunciation is important and it's a very reasonable request.

@Scott:
Thanks for listening to your users, I really appreciate that! :)

@Schnabelhund

No one is against this improvement.

The trade-off is deciding how to allocate time; if this was a simple fix it would have been done already. If you skim the forum you will see many people have many suggestions on how to improve Skritter. Not all of them can be done quickly.