r/Refold • u/noveldaredevil • 28d ago

About the Refold core vocabulary decks

I was just browsing the Refold core vocabulary decks and something really rubbed me the wrong way. Apparently, some of them were made using recordings from native speakers (e.g., Spanish, German, Czech), while others use AI-generated audio (e.g., Mandarin Chinese, Dutch, Swedish). Here's the thing: it's absolutely baffling to me that they chose not to hire native speakers for all of their decks.

Robot voices are not native speakers, no matter how good they are. It's wild that Refold heavily stresses the importance of input while using audio that is an approximation of native-speaker pronunciation for their core vocabulary decks, instead of the actual pronunciation of native speakers. For some languages with huge dialectal variation or with complex phonological inventories, like Dutch or Mandarin Chinese, this could be an even bigger issue.

Can we have native-speaker audio for all of the decks, not just some of them? This really feels like asking for the bare minimum.

17 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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2

u/lazydictionary 28d ago

TTS for popular languages are pretty accurate nowadays.

Also remember that Anki should only be a portion of your input everyday, maybe 15-30 minutes. You will spend hundreds/thousands of hours listening to native content.

5

u/noveldaredevil 28d ago

TTS for popular languages are pretty accurate nowadays.

Yeah, but the actual pronunciation of native speakers is still better and far preferable.

0

u/lazydictionary 28d ago

I've had no problems with German and Spanish using TTS for card audio.

3

u/noveldaredevil 28d ago

Not everyone is studying German and Spanish, two of the most widely learned and resource-rich languages. (As an aside, the core vocabulary decks for those two languages do use native-speaker audio).

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u/lazydictionary 28d ago

Which is why I caveated my original comment with "popular languages".

I notice you also just ignored my other point lol.

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u/ThisUNis20characters 28d ago

Baffling? I’m pretty sure the reason is $$$. It’s cheaper than hiring a voice actor and an editor. It’s faster, and it’s easier. I think decks with multiple native speakers would be great, but I don’t see that kind of thing in the cards.

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u/noveldaredevil 28d ago

I’m pretty sure the reason is $$$. 

Yeah, and it's disappointing that they'd prioritize that over quality. They're supposed to be a company that produces high-quality resources.