audio clips for words

[Hikaroshi]

So, I use the anki software for memorization, it's really helpful but I also realized it helps me immensely when I have a recording of the chinese word along with the flash card (front side english back side chinese and audio) but I was relying on the vocabulary words provided on a learning program from my school (based on the book we use) but right now I'm in a different program during the summer and most of the words I learn cannot be found on that program.

I really like that nciku has the option for a user to hear the way a word sounds but is there a way to extract the audio from nciku and use it or is there an alternative software or something else that I can use? I do record them myself after a while but it's better for my pronunciation to hear the native tongue, that and I usually sound very muddled I guess because of the quality of my speaker or something.

[yellowpower]

Hi

have you considered getting an electronic 'talking dictionary', specifically the english to chinese dictionary and vice versa, but they have to be made in Asia: China, Japan, Korea, Taiwan, etc. Usually, with the electronic talking dictionaries you can listen to more than one asian language but you have to check the model and its specifications. Not sure about the name of the program, but many have voices that sound very natural and not computerised, but still you'll need to test it for yourself. And lots of useful programs loaded into them. Input is by pinyin, and some models also allow you to write the chinese character on the screen, you just press the audio function and it reads it aloud, both text or just the word.

Other alternative is to listen to AM radio for broadcasts in Mandarin,the more you listen to the words being used and in different contexts, the better the retention.

Thank goodness for modern technology, lots of new tools to make language learning easier.

Jia you!!

[Hikaroshi]

I haven't really thought about getting an electronic dictionary. Have you bought one, which one would you recommend? If so, I'm assuming they have a similar flashcard model (according to what you have written above).

I mainly want to be able to get audio clips to plug into anki so I can study my words for Chinese class a little bit easier (since I've now discovered my learning style).

[roger2009]

Try Ting a database of words and sentences spoken by native speakers. Each word or sentence usually has several examples spoken by different people.

[chinskycraze]

The Thing database is an interesting thing, need to have a closer look at it soon. However, it still lacks a lot of entries for the more advanced levels, especially idioms. NCIKU is more extensive in that respect.

As for NCIKU, yes there is a way to get the audio files, however, it's VERY time-consuming. It also depends on the computer you're using. Basically you will need a program like AUDACITY. On a PC you need to select "Stereo Mix" as the Input Source (might not be available, depends on your soundcard drivers). On a MAC you need to install Soundflower, to intercept the sound of your computer. Wen you want to get the pronunciation of a word, you just need to play "record" in audacity, and hit the "Listen" button in nciku. Audacity records the sound and you can crop it and export it to whatever format you wish.

I've been doing that for ages now, and have quite a large database of those files stored on my drive (for more details see: http://www.chinese-forums.com/index.php?/topic/36728-looking-for-people-wanting-to-share-audio-files-for-flashcards/). In my case, I duplicate the soundtrack for each word, and affix the name with "_m" or "_f" depending on the gender of the speaker. It's a bit more time consuming, but then I can easily replace the file later if I found another file with better quality for it (Unfortunately, some NCIKU pronunciations are rather badly encoded, especially for the female versions). I usually record like 25-30 words in one go and use the "export multiple" option. Saves a lot of time. Recently, I've been doing a similar thing with PLECO's audio bundles on my iphone and a male-to-male audio cable. Works great.

Other than that, I don't know how to get at the NCIKU sounds in a faster way. I was trying to write a script in AppleScript to automate the process, but the pronunciations are embedded in .swf files, so it makes no sense to download those. Balls!

Hope I could help. Have fun with cutting the files. And if you have managed to get a few hundred files done, maybe you should consider participating in the exchange (see the link above). This way you might save yourself some work other people have done already.

[smurese]

I just had a look at NCIKU.com through the Developer Tools of any Chromium browser (Wrench settings icon > Tools > Developer Tools, then look under "Network" and refresh the page to list all the files that page is calling up).

The sound files themselves don't sit already embedded on the page. (All there is for sound is a SWF file for the pages's media player itself - that SWF file is not the audio file you're looking for.) After you click on one of those speaker icons in NCIKU to listen to audio, only then is an MP3 file called up - Developer Tools will list it a the bottom as "audio/mpeg" under "Type". If you right click on the "Name/Path" of the audio file (NCIKU names it with a "tts" somewhere in there) then you can "Copy link address". Paste the Link Address (it'll be very long gibberish) into another Chromium tab/window then your browser will prompt you to save the MP3 file to your computer. That's it! I've done exactly that to save an NCIKU MP3 example file to my own computer to play and manipulate as I wish.

This way you don't need any other software, and you get the original MP3 file.

The audio files on the "Ting" Chinese Study Center, unlike NCIKU, sit plainly on the page as WAV files - so it's easy to just right click and "save link as,,,"

I collected some Web resources (almost 30 different resources, all free) for learning Chinese VOCABULARY [ http://www.learnchin...-flashcard.html ]. Over ten of them are listed as having AUDIO capabilities (NCIKU and "Ting" are there). Of course there are quite a few vocabulary related resources on the "Free Software" page too [ http://www.learnchin...ng-chinese.html ]; or check out which of the Top 20 free online Chinese dictionaries have audio features [ http://www.learnchin...r-database.html ], and there are Listening sections too to that website.

[tooironic]

Surprised no one has mentioned Forvo.com yet.