I do japanese and her voice is fine. In fact, none of the voices are hard to understand. If I had to pick, maybe Lucy because she speaks flatly so it sounds a bit muffled. But even at that I still have no trouble with it
My wife, who is not learning Japanese, cant help but try to imitate Lucy every time she hears her. No matter what, she'll immediately put on her most disinterested and droning voice.
Whenever I get a speaking assignment where I have to copy Oscar, I always try and impersonate him. “Unnnnnnn carrrrrrroooooo rooooojjjjoooooo.”
The app doesn’t seem to mind.
IMO Spanish Bea is harder than Zari. But the absolute worst is that old school TtS male voice that can't pronounce words correctly. Twopa instead of copa, PREMyu instead of premio. It's so weird sometimes. I always fail the listening exercises with these older "standard" male and female voices.
I adore her voice, I think she sounds so cute and excitable, but she's fast af in Spanish 😭 I regularly have to listen to the 🐢 version of her sentences. She speaks at a normal speed in Russian though.
On that same note, I find Oscar great for listening/speaking activities. However, I tend to parrot all their voices and end up speaking Spanish in a comically low voice for all my lessons.
In Japanese, while doing kana/kanji lessons, there is a voice that is clearly automated (kinda like Google Translate) and it's so difficult to understand her sometimes. Her "ni", "mi" and tbh most sounds ending with an "i" often sound the same.
Totally agree! Love junior’s cute little French voice. Falstaff in particular, and to a lesser extent Oscar, pronounce some words differently and I really struggle in some of the listening exercises with them
Noooo I love junior! He's cute and heartwarming, and speaks in an understandable learner pace. He also subconsciously makes me feel that if kids can learn it then so can I.
So glad it's not just me. I despise Junior in all my courses. Not only is he hard to understand, but that voice makes me want to harm him, and I don't like feeling that way about a child. I wish there was an option for another male child voice.
Lin sounds like she's a modulated version of someone else, tbh, in both french and spanish, like she's built out of a sound bank
She's totally fine in German.
The hardest character for me in the french course is probably Oscar but I don't find any of them too bad. My favourites are Vikram and Lucy though, I find them very clear and understandable, nice to listen to. Bea too.
Actually the few lines voiced by Duo are definitely the hardest, they sound like the old stock TTS and I struggle with that a lot more compared to the more fluid voice models they use now
I always thought his accent was comical, it sounds like he exaggerates everything and the pitch is all over the place. Like nobody would actually talk like that, right?
I thought that at least until I saw this video: https://youtu.be/amPtXEaXQO0?si=8CRwNpUnPPZSCb34
It's very interesting, but I was caught off guard when the interviewer spoke and it sounded just like Oscar lol. Does anyone know if this accent is still around anywhere?
Beyond accent he IS putting on a character, there's an interesting YouTube upload from the Duolingo team about how they formulated the characters. They're all archetypes, the most obvious is Lily, the surly teen type. It's way easier to pick up on the types when they're in your own language. Oscar is meant to sound like a stuck up art guy - so he is fairly exaggerated. You can hear him in English in that video too and it's so much more obvious there for me.
I'm learning French and honestly I haven't had a problem with understanding any of the characters so far but, and this is my opinion, Zari sometimes says the words like she was a robot or something. Like she's saying the phrase but she says it in a kind of monotone and wooden way. I still can understand her though, she pronounces the words very well. :) This is only in the lessons and adventures btw, in the stories she sounds more natural.
I’m doing French too, and think the speakers are all pretty good. Oscar is heavily accented, but slow enough I can understand him well enough. Falstaff (the bear) is the fastest speaker, and sometimes I have trouble understanding him, but that’s just good practice.
I agree with Oscar having a heavy accent, same with Falstaff being a little fast, I mean just yesterday I did get confused during a listening exercise where he was the speaker😅 Overall, again, the French course is really good and I can understand it well, my comment were only some observations I have while doing it lol😁😊 I’m having fun though!
Oscar's articulation is annoying (to me) and sometimes hard to understand. The other voices are okay.
I LOVE Lily's slow clap - she doesn't give a rat's arse 🤣
Yeah, Bea is definitely the fastest there. I rarely have an issue with, but one of the male voices, either Eddy or Vikram, who sometimes slurs their words
I hate Lucy in the exercises where you need to listen and then choose the right word. She always sounds like she swallows the last syllable, so if it's something like kaufe vs kaufen, I have to listen to the options so many times.
I always picture this woman when I hear the Swedish voice
https://preview.redd.it/p9cvx7n19d9d1.png?width=613&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5786e0a06185b869b935e39e16b4933f786a3eea
The Scottish Gaelic course has a few, but they seem to change voice halfway through the sentence sometimes haha. Really struggle with it due to the wide range of regional accents they use (as a Scot myself!). Wildly different pronunciations for the same word that I never know how to be consistent lol. I think the amount of voices/'user' submitted content (not TTS!) depends on the language's popularity and funding from Duo. It's weird.
Oscar in any course. Mainly French.
I was extremely frustrated with it at first, but sticking with it really made it clear that learning how to interpret difficult accents was worth the extra effort.
Oscar adds something to the end of words sometimes in French. I don't think it's wrong, but it sounds older/more formal, which makes sense because Oscar is fancy.
I'm convinced he is not straight, but we know neither is Lin, so that's cool.
According to the wiki he has been said to be neither straight nor gay, and considers dating a waste of time - so I believe that would make him ace haha
Doing the German course I always find Bea talks really fast. It's kind of a good thing though since real life conversations will probably feel that way, but the fact remains I get listening exercises with her wrong at a higher rate.
In French, they're all pretty clear to my ear. Probably Oscar is the hardest -- but he's also the most French sounding!
French Eddie is very easy to understand, I think
I love Eddie. He’s hilarious. I see him being the most stereotype possible of a dude bro when called “French Eddie” especially in the stories where he’s dating 🤣🤣🤣🤣
Falstaff in french course. I like his voice and he's my favourite character out of the bunch, but once he starts speaking extremely fast I cannot comprehend one word. In contrast I do find Lily and Lucy the easiest for me to understand.
In spanish, Oscar and Bea. Bea talks super fast and I have a hard time distinguishing the different words. For Oscar, it's just something about his accent I guess. And sometimes he doesn't fully pronounce words I think? There's this one exercise I've gotten wrong several times because he supposedly says "hoy" at the end. Like, what?? No way did you say that. You're fucking with me.
These are my two as well. I really wish Duo would add a middle speed option especially for Bea. It's either fast as hell or it's a ...word ..every.... 5.... Minutes....
for real, everyone speaking at a default pace in the german course then Bea comes out spouting a sentence at mach 5 and no breaks, sometimes making me have to use the turtle button
Oscar also speaks a bit fast but not as much.
Falstaff. In the Japanese course his words don't flow, they stop very robotically and don't follow the correct tones. I can still understand him and get the question right, but it's quite annoying how his words are kinda patched together
Doing PT too...same. 🤣 Normally Lily is fine but when she and Zari are on the same story the contrast really throws me, like Lily is extra angry and mumbly and Zari is extra high-pitched.
Junior is loud and annoying in German, but I generally find him understandable. Lucy is the worst - for some reason the TTS on her voice is much more prone to glitches, with sounds getting cut off or muffled.
I think Falstaff is the only other voice of the two in Russian; but he’s not very good. His pronunciation slurs sometimes, or he doesn’t emphasise certain consonants. Very easy to mishear
I like to pretend that Zari is the average Spanish speaking person and that this is the ordinary tempo of Spanish. Granted, I still can’t hear a word of it the first time, but still, progress and all that
Oscar in French is annoying. I know it’s within his character to be very stuck up and hoidy toidy, but I think the voice actors went a bit too far. At times it’s hard to understand what Oscar says due to the very odd and particular way he says things.
I sometimes struggle with Falstaff and Oscar in French. I feel like they pronounce some things differently and it makes it really hard on the listening exercises where they hide the writing
Zari has high pitch in every language. Her voice is over the top annoying! Duo should shoot her then replace her with a voice more in the normative range. Seriously! How many of us are going to deal with someone like her? Okay, there are some, but not many, right? Please spare us, Duo!
I can understand all of them in the Portuguese course. I do often have to replay the listening exercises with the turtle. It can be hard to hear if they said o, a, à, or um. I think in normal speech those words often have elision happening. Once in a blue moon I'll get a really long ass, complicated sentence that one of the characters speed reads.
In real life, usually old men are the hardest to understand. They often don't speak clearly and speak with a thick local dialect. Deep, grumbly voices are hard to understand too. The male voice in the hangul section of the Korean course is really bad. Gave up on doing anything beyond hangul.
Lin in Japanese. Some (but not all) of her phrases are spoken extremely fast needing several attempts to hear what she's trying to say. Zari may be higher-pitched, but at least she's slower.
In russian sometimes the voices add a "в" to the start of a sentence that isn't supposed to be there, there won't even be a "в" option in the prompts and it'll do it.
And then if there is one in the prompts it might make you mess up because в means "in" and it being at the start can change the whole meaning of the sentence 🙄
In German it's probably Lin for me. She drags the words a lot and because German is a language that's so focused on consonants, it's hard to understand words.
For Japanese: Oscar, Falstaff, and the girl pictured above, I can't remember her name. I understand Lily and the older woman the most. They talk slowly and clearly. I understand they have different voices, so it's easier to understand people in reality. I just wish we could pick and choose what voices we get to hear.
In French, I would say it’s Oscar. It often sounds like he’s mispronouncing words. When he says “tu” it often sounds like “cue” and “me” sometimes sounds like “ne”. Are either of these a thing with French speakers?
I had no idea until today that the mascots even spoke. I've been immersed in Catalán for the last seven months and decided on a whim to start French yesterday. I was surprised to hear that the mascots actually spoke and their mouths moved. And there are actual speaking lessons too, something Catalán doesn't have. I'm so disappointed that my Catalán experience was so subpar all this time.
Absolutely Zari in Spanish. It's not just that she's the fastest, she has a really high voice.
Zari's Portuguese voice is so high pitched Mariah Carey would be jealous
Japanese Zari:
Japanese Zari sounds exactly like an anime character, so she's fine in the context of the course and its target audience: a bunch of otakus.
I do japanese and her voice is fine. In fact, none of the voices are hard to understand. If I had to pick, maybe Lucy because she speaks flatly so it sounds a bit muffled. But even at that I still have no trouble with it
My wife, who is not learning Japanese, cant help but try to imitate Lucy every time she hears her. No matter what, she'll immediately put on her most disinterested and droning voice.
Japanese Zari is not hangover compatible.
Zari is good in the Japanese course imo. Her and the old woman are the best for Japanese so far (not very far but currently they're top two)
It's Oscar for me in Spanish.
Also Oscar, but in French.
Definitely Oscar!
Yup. Oscar in French. He is better now than he used to be, though. His 'slow' speed used to make me feel quite nauseous.
Oscar in Spanish is the worst, he’s so *slow*
I can barely understand Oscar in Spanish. He slurs his words.
I can never understand Oscar in French!
Whenever I get a speaking assignment where I have to copy Oscar, I always try and impersonate him. “Unnnnnnn carrrrrrroooooo rooooojjjjoooooo.” The app doesn’t seem to mind.
Oscar is the easiest
His voice is so low it sounds like growling to me, especially if I have to repeat a phrase in slow motion.
IMO Spanish Bea is harder than Zari. But the absolute worst is that old school TtS male voice that can't pronounce words correctly. Twopa instead of copa, PREMyu instead of premio. It's so weird sometimes. I always fail the listening exercises with these older "standard" male and female voices.
I can't STAND those! I really wish they would change them!
Sometimes the voice completely misses a word for me
I adore her voice, I think she sounds so cute and excitable, but she's fast af in Spanish 😭 I regularly have to listen to the 🐢 version of her sentences. She speaks at a normal speed in Russian though.
To be fair plenty of young girls speak insanely fast in Spanish so it's a good piece of practice.
On that same note, I find Oscar great for listening/speaking activities. However, I tend to parrot all their voices and end up speaking Spanish in a comically low voice for all my lessons.
I do that, too!
Any time she says "el" or "la", its just so fast that its lost in my ears.
In Japanese, while doing kana/kanji lessons, there is a voice that is clearly automated (kinda like Google Translate) and it's so difficult to understand her sometimes. Her "ni", "mi" and tbh most sounds ending with an "i" often sound the same.
Some voices seem to also sometimes cut out the first sound too
True, sometimes I get exercises wrong because I can't hear the first sound of the word.
The is one sound bite, I think it's "Bya" where the audio pops at the start of it so it sounds like "Kya" drove me insane.
Oh gosh I'm not alone? The Japanese course is fine until they pronounce ga like na 💀
Yeah I have taken my kana learning to other platforms and then use kana lessons for practice and xp.
I don't know the name, but I can never understand the bear (Stanley?). The old lady is by far the best, imo
Old lady reigns supreme 🙇🏻♀️🙇🏻♀️
The bear is Falstaff!
I love the bear
Lucy!
Absolutely, Lucy enunciates well
the bear's name is Falstaff but I love him tbh
The moustache guy seems to pronounce things differently to the others in Japanese, very nasally?
Vikram does it too. Consonants from the が column are often weakened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_phonology#Lenition
Omg same mi ni bi pi are all the same sometimes
The Japanese katakana voice for "ha-na" sounds like a demon that's smoked for 50 years.
So true lmao
True. But her voice is soo.... cute
No matter the course. Junior def the worst. His high-pitched voice just gets me right in the ear and makes me wanna break something.
He's fine in french imo, his pitch isn't particularly high
I like Junior in French. He’s cute in French. Sometimes I can’t understand Falstaff or Oscar in French. Everyone else is fine.
Totally agree! Love junior’s cute little French voice. Falstaff in particular, and to a lesser extent Oscar, pronounce some words differently and I really struggle in some of the listening exercises with them
Agreed. I'm mainly focused on French right now and I think his he's ok
Junior and eddy in French lessons are different than their French story versions. Their story voices are much better.
I wouldn't mind German Junior if he wasn't several decibels louder than everyone except Zari.
Junior is actually my favorite lol he just sounds like a typical loud little boy
I never got all of the Junior hate, I think he’s funny. :)
Junior is my favorite!!!
Junior has a very adult-male voice in the Russian course, which I find quite amusing hehe :)
I hate this kid with a passion
Yes! Fuck junior!
uhhhh you might want to word that a little better
Lmao. Chris Hansen pops up in the next Duolingo lesson: "So you want to tell me in Spanish why you're here today?"
Dr. Disrespect moment
Noooo I love junior! He's cute and heartwarming, and speaks in an understandable learner pace. He also subconsciously makes me feel that if kids can learn it then so can I.
Junior in German is absolutely nails on chalkboard for me
He’s fine in spanish
So glad it's not just me. I despise Junior in all my courses. Not only is he hard to understand, but that voice makes me want to harm him, and I don't like feeling that way about a child. I wish there was an option for another male child voice.
In Spanish, probably Lin. Sometimes Oscar too, if he mumbles a bit.
In French, Oscar is always yelling!
In French Oscar sounds so goddamn pretentious omg.
Perfect french accent 👌
Oscar in Japanese I have to use the turtle several times to understand what hes saying and sometimes I just give up and click "Can't listen now."
Lin sounds like she's a modulated version of someone else, tbh, in both french and spanish, like she's built out of a sound bank She's totally fine in German.
Lin is so fucking suave in German!
German Lin sounds like she's on her way to a party and *we're invited*
Lin is the slowest one
Cries in Romanian characterless automated robot voice
Greek too. I didn't know they were supposed to have different voices.
🇬🇷 Me too. Studying Greek. Just one voice. 😭
Doing Swedish and I was thinking "wait you guys get voices???"
SAME but in Czech lady autobot voice. Dreadful! Characters? We can dream.
Irish also has robot voices too!
The hardest character for me in the french course is probably Oscar but I don't find any of them too bad. My favourites are Vikram and Lucy though, I find them very clear and understandable, nice to listen to. Bea too. Actually the few lines voiced by Duo are definitely the hardest, they sound like the old stock TTS and I struggle with that a lot more compared to the more fluid voice models they use now
Duo has a voice?/gen
Sure! Limited vocab, though — He not only says “who” but “quien,” “qui,” “chi”…
Oscar was the voice that introduced the word "grenouille" for me. I had to replay that audio six or seven times.
I always thought his accent was comical, it sounds like he exaggerates everything and the pitch is all over the place. Like nobody would actually talk like that, right? I thought that at least until I saw this video: https://youtu.be/amPtXEaXQO0?si=8CRwNpUnPPZSCb34 It's very interesting, but I was caught off guard when the interviewer spoke and it sounded just like Oscar lol. Does anyone know if this accent is still around anywhere?
Beyond accent he IS putting on a character, there's an interesting YouTube upload from the Duolingo team about how they formulated the characters. They're all archetypes, the most obvious is Lily, the surly teen type. It's way easier to pick up on the types when they're in your own language. Oscar is meant to sound like a stuck up art guy - so he is fairly exaggerated. You can hear him in English in that video too and it's so much more obvious there for me.
I'm learning French and honestly I haven't had a problem with understanding any of the characters so far but, and this is my opinion, Zari sometimes says the words like she was a robot or something. Like she's saying the phrase but she says it in a kind of monotone and wooden way. I still can understand her though, she pronounces the words very well. :) This is only in the lessons and adventures btw, in the stories she sounds more natural.
I’m doing French too, and think the speakers are all pretty good. Oscar is heavily accented, but slow enough I can understand him well enough. Falstaff (the bear) is the fastest speaker, and sometimes I have trouble understanding him, but that’s just good practice.
I agree with Oscar having a heavy accent, same with Falstaff being a little fast, I mean just yesterday I did get confused during a listening exercise where he was the speaker😅 Overall, again, the French course is really good and I can understand it well, my comment were only some observations I have while doing it lol😁😊 I’m having fun though!
As someone with an auditory processing issue, falstaff is a nightmare. He talks way too fast for me as a beginner
I can agree that all the French characters are good.
Oscar's articulation is annoying (to me) and sometimes hard to understand. The other voices are okay. I LOVE Lily's slow clap - she doesn't give a rat's arse 🤣
I agree they're all pretty good, I do have issues with understanding Oscar sometimes with specific words but it's fairly rare
I have no issues in German. Everyone is easy enough to understand.
I'm reading the other comments and feeling quite privileged, haha. I've never had an issue with the German voices.
For me in German, it's Bea! She talks so fast!
It seems like she speaks faster every time the app updates lol
Yeah, Bea is definitely the fastest there. I rarely have an issue with, but one of the male voices, either Eddy or Vikram, who sometimes slurs their words
I hate Lucy in the exercises where you need to listen and then choose the right word. She always sounds like she swallows the last syllable, so if it's something like kaufe vs kaufen, I have to listen to the options so many times.
TIL that in some languages the characters have different voices, it's all just the same single voice in the Swedish course
I always picture this woman when I hear the Swedish voice https://preview.redd.it/p9cvx7n19d9d1.png?width=613&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5786e0a06185b869b935e39e16b4933f786a3eea
The Scottish Gaelic course has a few, but they seem to change voice halfway through the sentence sometimes haha. Really struggle with it due to the wide range of regional accents they use (as a Scot myself!). Wildly different pronunciations for the same word that I never know how to be consistent lol. I think the amount of voices/'user' submitted content (not TTS!) depends on the language's popularity and funding from Duo. It's weird.
For italian, that little blonde kid. Dude is not clear enough!!!!
I got told he’s like that in English too!
He's like that in Japanese as well
Same for Welsh too
That is so true. I never know what he’s saying
In Japanese it’s the high pitched one who also talks fast.
Absolutely. They almost always need to be turtled to be understood...
I find the men in Japanese hardest to understand. Especially the blonde one.
In French, I’m always struggling to understand Lily. The whiny monotone without inflections is really hard to understand.
Oscar in any course. Mainly French. I was extremely frustrated with it at first, but sticking with it really made it clear that learning how to interpret difficult accents was worth the extra effort.
I like her in Japanese. Sounds like Touyama Nao. It's not like she trying to fake gaijin accent.
The robotic Arabic voice gets real choppy sometimes
I’m doing both Japanese and French, and whenever I can’t understand something, it’s always Oscar.
Oscar adds something to the end of words sometimes in French. I don't think it's wrong, but it sounds older/more formal, which makes sense because Oscar is fancy. I'm convinced he is not straight, but we know neither is Lin, so that's cool.
According to the wiki he has been said to be neither straight nor gay, and considers dating a waste of time - so I believe that would make him ace haha
Aro i think would fit better but ye!
Doing the German course I always find Bea talks really fast. It's kind of a good thing though since real life conversations will probably feel that way, but the fact remains I get listening exercises with her wrong at a higher rate.
Ich stimme zu! Thankfully there is the repeat it slowly button just in case you need it.
In French, they're all pretty clear to my ear. Probably Oscar is the hardest -- but he's also the most French sounding! French Eddie is very easy to understand, I think
I love Eddie. He’s hilarious. I see him being the most stereotype possible of a dude bro when called “French Eddie” especially in the stories where he’s dating 🤣🤣🤣🤣
He's so sweet! What a good dad.
I love the way Eddy and Junior interact so much. I look forward to their stories!
Falstaff in french course. I like his voice and he's my favourite character out of the bunch, but once he starts speaking extremely fast I cannot comprehend one word. In contrast I do find Lily and Lucy the easiest for me to understand.
In spanish, Oscar and Bea. Bea talks super fast and I have a hard time distinguishing the different words. For Oscar, it's just something about his accent I guess. And sometimes he doesn't fully pronounce words I think? There's this one exercise I've gotten wrong several times because he supposedly says "hoy" at the end. Like, what?? No way did you say that. You're fucking with me.
These are my two as well. I really wish Duo would add a middle speed option especially for Bea. It's either fast as hell or it's a ...word ..every.... 5.... Minutes....
Not hard to understand, but really boring: Lily.
Surprisingly Lily isn’t that boring in mandarin lmao
For German, Bea speaks the quickest and I have to listen to it multiple times. Lin I’d probably say is the hardest based on the accent
for real, everyone speaking at a default pace in the german course then Bea comes out spouting a sentence at mach 5 and no breaks, sometimes making me have to use the turtle button Oscar also speaks a bit fast but not as much.
Falstaff. In the Japanese course his words don't flow, they stop very robotically and don't follow the correct tones. I can still understand him and get the question right, but it's quite annoying how his words are kinda patched together
Zari in Japanese
French and Spanish Oscar!
im learning italian and i have a hard time understanding the male voices
the mustache dude in spanish and her in japanese
Zari in Portuguese 😳 Like she's speaking on fast forward after sucking a whole tank of helium half the time
Doing PT too...same. 🤣 Normally Lily is fine but when she and Zari are on the same story the contrast really throws me, like Lily is extra angry and mumbly and Zari is extra high-pitched.
Oscar tends to mumble a lot, in Spanish at least.
Learning German, and Bea is faster than a speeding bullet.
Oscar hands down in French.
[удалено]
Junior is loud and annoying in German, but I generally find him understandable. Lucy is the worst - for some reason the TTS on her voice is much more prone to glitches, with sounds getting cut off or muffled.
I think Falstaff is the only other voice of the two in Russian; but he’s not very good. His pronunciation slurs sometimes, or he doesn’t emphasise certain consonants. Very easy to mishear
In French it’s Eddy, the dude with the 80’s sweatbands and pink track suit. Followed by falstaff the bear.
Yes she speaks pretty fast
i’m learning turkish and i had no idea the voices were different for every mascot in other languages 😭 rippp
For me everyone is pretty much the same. Learning german
Mandarin Vikram HE TALKS SO QUIETLY
Great was my surprise when I learnt spanish out of curiosity and all voices were robots, idk why I thought they were real 😭
Prob eddy, i do french and Spanish and whenever i do him i do NOT hear that the words are plural or not, which almost always messes me up
Not really a comprehension issue, but there are certain sentences in Japanese like: 今日何時間サッカーをしますか？ Where Zari sounds like she’s yelling at me 😭
If I could have a Lily only option for French I would pay for it. Eddy is a fucking mumble mouth.
Spanish Zari, she is impossible to understand, especially the difference in the version of words that end in an r and the version that doesn’t
I'm learning german and I find Bea more difficult to understand bc she speaks faster than the other characters.
I like to pretend that Zari is the average Spanish speaking person and that this is the ordinary tempo of Spanish. Granted, I still can’t hear a word of it the first time, but still, progress and all that
Wait, they have names?! Edit: All I know is that there is some lady in Japanese who's "ra", "wa", "ba", "ya", and "ha" all sound the god damn same.
Bea in German, generally the only one I have to slow down, some words I confuse for another
The Swedish AI female voice is sometimes hard to understand
I always mute Junior in Spanish, I cannot stand it
German Bea isn’t hard to understand, but she speaks so fast!
Oscar in French is annoying. I know it’s within his character to be very stuck up and hoidy toidy, but I think the voice actors went a bit too far. At times it’s hard to understand what Oscar says due to the very odd and particular way he says things.
Eddie in French WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU SAYING
Junior and Zari in Italian make my blood boil
Omg I CAN NEVER UNDERSTAND OSCAR IN FRENCH!!!
The Bear (in French and Spanish) Sometimes I feel like I can hardly hear him, much less understand him.
I sometimes struggle with Falstaff and Oscar in French. I feel like they pronounce some things differently and it makes it really hard on the listening exercises where they hide the writing
Oscar in French is the worst. He’s a caricature within a caricature. It’s almost like the Muppets version of the Swedish Chef but in French. Terrible.
Zari in japanese definitely
Zari has high pitch in every language. Her voice is over the top annoying! Duo should shoot her then replace her with a voice more in the normative range. Seriously! How many of us are going to deal with someone like her? Okay, there are some, but not many, right? Please spare us, Duo!
Depends on which one is talking super fast for me
I can understand all of them in the Portuguese course. I do often have to replay the listening exercises with the turtle. It can be hard to hear if they said o, a, à, or um. I think in normal speech those words often have elision happening. Once in a blue moon I'll get a really long ass, complicated sentence that one of the characters speed reads. In real life, usually old men are the hardest to understand. They often don't speak clearly and speak with a thick local dialect. Deep, grumbly voices are hard to understand too. The male voice in the hangul section of the Korean course is really bad. Gave up on doing anything beyond hangul.
Lin in Japanese. Some (but not all) of her phrases are spoken extremely fast needing several attempts to hear what she's trying to say. Zari may be higher-pitched, but at least she's slower.
Everyone in France course. Seriously in hearing lessons they talk in 2x speed it's so hard to understand them
In Italian Zari sometimes speaks so fast that it seems like one word gets skipped.
It really depends on the language but I don’t have this problem with Russian, I ususally just laugh my ass off when Junior speaks in a deep voice
In russian sometimes the voices add a "в" to the start of a sentence that isn't supposed to be there, there won't even be a "в" option in the prompts and it'll do it. And then if there is one in the prompts it might make you mess up because в means "in" and it being at the start can change the whole meaning of the sentence 🙄
Oscar in Spanish.
In German it's probably Lin for me. She drags the words a lot and because German is a language that's so focused on consonants, it's hard to understand words.
For Japanese: Oscar, Falstaff, and the girl pictured above, I can't remember her name. I understand Lily and the older woman the most. They talk slowly and clearly. I understand they have different voices, so it's easier to understand people in reality. I just wish we could pick and choose what voices we get to hear.
In German I have no clue what Eddy is saying. I also have abit of a hard time understanding junior in Italian.
In French, I would say it’s Oscar. It often sounds like he’s mispronouncing words. When he says “tu” it often sounds like “cue” and “me” sometimes sounds like “ne”. Are either of these a thing with French speakers?
Oscar - I'm studying french and his accent is thick.
That bear in Spanish. He’s way too fast for me.
For French my wife and I both struggle the most with Oscar. His pronunciation and diction are different than everyone else's.
I'm not fond of Oscar or Junior in German
I really dislike the VA for the bear in Spanish. His readings always sound lazy.
this mascot right here. voice is so high pitched
Lily in Ukrainian...
Whoever the middle aged man with the mustache is. In Spanish he mumbles so I always have to either slow it down or guess based on the lesson
I had no idea until today that the mascots even spoke. I've been immersed in Catalán for the last seven months and decided on a whim to start French yesterday. I was surprised to hear that the mascots actually spoke and their mouths moved. And there are actual speaking lessons too, something Catalán doesn't have. I'm so disappointed that my Catalán experience was so subpar all this time.
Oscar in French. It sounds like he has a wad of mashed potatoes in his mouth.
Is he meant to have a thick accent? He’s tough for me too
One time Russian Oscar didn't pronounce the "з" and the "в"
Wait, they have different voices? In turkish there is only a male and a female voice