This time I’m posting in English because I think this will only be useful for Japanese-as-a-second-language folks. So I often use the Google app for drafting texts/email by voice in Japanese. This is because I’m much better at speaking than writing in Japanese. But Google doesn’t have any speech punctuation like it does in English. For example, if Ⅰ’m dictating a text message in English and I’m ending an interrogative sentence I say, “question mark” and the correct punctuation appears. But in Japanese, if I say “hatena” into the microphone, Google prints the word, 「はてな」which is really annoying. So I usually dictate the entire message and then go back and hunt through it to add the missing brackets, commas, periods, and question marks.
I found this lovely blog post (http://nakamahalog.com) which explains how to use the Swype app as an ok workaround.
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| Swype keyboard with Star Trek skin. The microphone icon is a communicator. |
BUT Swype wants a lot of permissions. I just switched off everything except Microphone. And I keep rotating my default keyboard in Settings, because they are basically tricky little keyloggers in my humble opinion.
The other problem was, I was saying the wrong words like “chon” for a period. nakamahalog also provides this handy chart of what to call all the punctuation marks when using Swype (and probably Google, whenever they get around to this functionality). I took the liberty of adding the yomikata below:
| [ | 大かっこ開く dai kakko hiraku | ] | 大かっこ閉じる dai kakko tojiru |
| ‘ | アポストロフィー aposutorofī | ◯ | まる maru |
| ▲ | 黒さんかく kuro sankaku | : | コロン koron |
| , | コンマ konma | – | ダッシュ dasshu |
| ! | 感嘆符／ビックリマーク／ kantan fu / bikkuri māku エクスクラメーション・マーク ekusukuramēshon māku |
– | ハイフン haifun |
| . | ピリオド／ドット piriodo / dotto | ? | 疑問符／はてな gimon fu / hatena |
| ” | ダブルクオーテーション daburu kuōtēshon | ” | ダブルクオーテーション閉じる daburu kuōtēshon tojiru |
| ‘ | クオーテーション kuōtēshon | ‘ | クオーテーション閉じる kuōtēshon tojiru |
| ; | セミコロン semi koron | & | アンド／アンパサンド ando / anpasando |
| * | アステリスク asuterisuku | @ | アットマーク atto māku |
| / | スラッシュ surasshu | ^ | キャレット kyaretto |
| ・ | 中黒 chū kuro | ° | 度記号 do kigō |
| # | シャープ shāpu | % | パーセント pāsento |
| _ | アンダーバー／アンダースコア andābā / andāsukoa | | | パイプ paipu |
| $ | ドル記号 doru kigō | ¢ | セント記号 sento kigō |
| £ | ポンド記号 pondo kigō | € | ユーロサイン yūro sain |
| ¥ | 円記号 en kigō |  |
しかめっ面 shikamettsura |
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スマイリー sumairī |  |
ウインク uinku |
| ® | 登録商標 tōroku shōhyō | > | 大なり dai nari |
| < | 小なり ko nari | – | マイナス／引く mainasu / hiku |
| x | かける kakeru | + | プラス／足す purasu / tasu |
| ÷ | わる waru | = | イコール ikōru |