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Around 40 years ago Texas Instruments created the Speak & Spell as an English language educational toy [1]. I couldn't find anything quite like it in Japan. H

Around 40 years ago Texas Instruments created the Speak & Spell as an English language educational toy [1]. I couldn't find anything quite like it in Japan. However, General Instrument produced a chip that could generate allophones for speech synthesis around the same time [2]. Much to my delight, the SP0256 could generate just about all the phonemes found in Japanese speech. I wrote a program to display hiragana text on an EGA monitor while generating corresponding speech from the SP0256. It worked very well, but unfortunately had a terribly robotic quality. I wisely decided to put it aside and instead accepted Chibi Maruko-chan as my instructor. I haven't been to Japan for a few years, but I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speak_%26_Spell_(toy) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256

tkgally 4y ago
> I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? My daughter is trying limit my grandson’s exposure to electronic devices, including tablets and smartphones, for the time being. Also, he lives with three doting adults who are happy to play the role of such gadgets. So I haven’t been paying attention to what’s available in that area these days. But a quick search in the Apple app store found many Japanese education apps for children. The sites of a couple of developers are at [1] and [2]. A search for toys for learning kana at Yodobashi Camera turns up only nondigital items [3]. I suspect the market for stand-alone devices in that category has disappeared because of smartphones and tablets. [1] https://waochi.wao.ne.jp https://waochi.wao.ne.jp [2] https://www.beatnix.co.jp https://www.beatnix.co.jp [3] https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/141358/141360/?discontinued=false&sorttyp=SELL_PRICE_DESC https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/1413...

tkgally 4y ago

> I imagine there must now be toys like the Speak & Spell to accelerate children's basic reading skills. Have you seen any? My daughter is trying limit my grandson’s exposure to electronic devices, including tablets and smartphones, for the time being. Also, he lives with three doting adults who are happy to play the role of such gadgets. So I haven’t been paying attention to what’s available in that area these days. But a quick search in the Apple app store found many Japanese education apps for children. The sites of a couple of developers are at [1] and [2]. A search for toys for learning kana at Yodobashi Camera turns up only nondigital items [3]. I suspect the market for stand-alone devices in that category has disappeared because of smartphones and tablets. [1] https://waochi.wao.ne.jp https://waochi.wao.ne.jp [2] https://www.beatnix.co.jp https://www.beatnix.co.jp [3] https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/141358/141360/?discontinued=false&sorttyp=SELL_PRICE_DESC https://www.yodobashi.com/category/141001/141336/141337/1413...