SayIt

Pick up an item, say its name out loud in the language you're learning, or lose it.

I made this because I wanted to practice my English while playing, and flashcards are boring. SayIt turns Minecraft into a speaking exercise. Every time you get an item you haven't said yet, a small panel pops up with its name and a timer. Say it into your mic. If the mod understands you, the item is yours. If the timer runs out, it's deleted.

You can learn English, Mandarin Chinese, Japanese, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, Turkish, Norwegian, Korean, Polish, Ukrainian, Hungarian, Swedish, Finnish, Dutch, Danish, Greek, Filipino, Traditional Chinese, Arabic or Cantonese. The game asks you which one the first time you join a world.

New in 1.2.0

• 24 languages: Dutch, Danish, Greek, Filipino, Traditional Chinese (Zhuyin), Arabic and Cantonese are new.
• Talk to villagers: open a villager's trades, say the name of something it sells, and that trade is about 30% cheaper for a whole Minecraft day.
• Bestiary: every creature you've named gets a page. Optional rule: an animal can't be touched until you say its name.
• Daily goals, mastery levels and a talking teacher.
• Hear yourself (H): your own answer plays back, then the teacher's voice.
• Readings in your own letters, English shown as it sounds, flashcard export for Anki, save and load your progress.

Why this one is different

There are quiz mods that teach vocabulary, and there are voice mods that let you break blocks by talking. As far as I could find, nothing does both. SayIt is built around speaking, not typing answers into a box:

• It actually scores your pronunciation (you see what it heard and a percentage, like heard: "oak lock" 96%).
• It teaches 24 languages instead of only English.
• Speech recognition runs offline on your own PC. No account, no API key, no server sending your voice anywhere.
• It also asks short spoken sentences about what you're doing, so it's not just single words.
• One mod for Fabric, Forge and NeoForge, from 1.20.1 up to 26.3.

What it does

Items. Every item type gets asked once. Logs, dirt, your first iron pickaxe, items from other mods too (names come from the game's own language files, so anything translated works).

Sentences. Every couple of minutes the game asks you to say something about what just happened: you crafted something, killed a mob, went to sleep, caught a fish, traded with a villager, walked into the Nether, got low on health. Things like "I just crafted a wooden pickaxe." or "It is very hot here." Get it right and you get some XP. The meaning is shown in your own language underneath.

Pocket Dictionary. A little book that lists every word you've learned, its translation and your best score. There's a Practice button for a quick review. New players get one for free (it isn't asked until you drop it and pick it up again), or craft one from a book, paper and lapis lazuli.

Scoring that's fair to accents. Two recognizers listen at the same time. One writes down whatever it hears. The other one only picks between the right answer, a bunch of wrong answers and "didn't understand". So a slight accent still passes, but mumbling random stuff doesn't.

Spaced review. Learned words come back after a day, then 3 days, a week and a month, so they stick. Reviews never take anything away, and a word that passes its month-long review is mastered.

Hear it. Press I (or click a word in the Pocket Dictionary) to hear the word read aloud with your computer's own voices, or K to hear it slowly. Press N while looking at a block or a creature to see and hear its name in the language you're learning.

More than items. Short extra challenges ask how many of something you carry ("three"), the colour of a coloured item, the name of a new biome when you walk into it, and the name of a creature you meet for the first time.

Pokémon too. With Cobblemon installed, wild Pokémon ask their own species name in the language you're learning (ピカチュウ for Pikachu in Japanese). Get it wrong and it runs away. Your own Pokémon never do.

See what you missed. If you don't pass, the letters you didn't say right turn red. Items you've learned also show their name in the language you're learning in the inventory tooltip.

No mic? No problem. Press Y and type the answer instead.

Your panel, your dictionary. Drag the challenge panel and the villager teacher anywhere on the screen, or pick a preset (Settings, U). Press O to open the Pocket Dictionary any time, and get a new one after you respawn.

Reading help. Chinese words show their pinyin under them (木镐 → mù gǎo), Japanese words show furigana and romaji (you choose which, and whether words are spaced), and Russian, Ukrainian and Korean words show how they are read in Latin letters. When typing, you can type the reading too (mu gao).

Make it as easy or as hard as you want

Press U, then Game rules…, and set it up the way you like to play:

• Penalty when you get it wrong: delete the item, drop it, a bad effect (slowness, weakness, blindness…), lose 2 hearts, an explosion (no blocks broken), or nothing. Hiding the item in a chest doesn't dodge it.
• Effect rewards: a short good effect (speed, jump boost, haste, luck) for every right answer.
• Hard mode, learn or die: 1, 3 or 5 wrong answers in a row and you die. Off by default.
• Multiple choice: now and then, between the spoken challenges, pick the right word out of 4 for something you've already learned, with furigana, pinyin or other readings under each answer. Answer with the keypad keys 1-4, or switch to the mouse. Off, rarely, sometimes or often.
• The teacher: a librarian villager next to the panel who nods when you're right and gets angry when you're wrong.
• Coloured words: the new word in a sentence stands out.

On a server the operator picks the penalty, rewards and hard mode. Everything else is each player's own choice.

Pick your level

Press U, then Game rules…: Beginner asks only item names, Intermediate adds creatures, places, biomes, numbers and colours, and Advanced asks everything, sentences too. New players start in the middle.

Multiplayer

• The player who knows the most words wears a gold crown (it sits on top of helmets too). You can turn yours off in Settings.
• /sayitenglish top shows the best speakers in the world.
• /sayitenglish race (operators) starts a word race: everyone gets the same item, the first to say it right wins.

Progress

A daily streak with rewards (XP every day, a diamond every 7th day), the Pocket Dictionary showing when each word comes back, and 10 advancements in their own tab.

Settings (press U)

• Language you're learning (each language keeps its own word list)
• Microphone, picked from a list with a live level meter so you can see it's hearing you
• Game rules: level (beginner, intermediate, advanced), penalty (delete, drop, bad effect, lose 2 hearts or nothing), effect rewards, hard mode, multiple choice, the teacher, coloured words
• Pass score (default 75%)
• Sentence challenges on or off
• Wear the crown when you know the most words (on or off)
• Show the word in the language you learn, or in your own language so you have to remember it (recall mode)
• Speech engine: offline (Vosk), Groq Whisper with your own free key if you want even better recognition, or typing only

Commands

/sayitenglish stats · /sayitenglish practice · /sayitenglish top · /sayitenglish race · /sayitenglish review · /sayitenglish reset

Good to know

• The first time you use a language, its speech model (30 to 55 MB) is downloaded from alphacephei.com (Vosk, Apache 2.0). After that it works without internet.
• Japanese readings (Kuromoji, Apache 2.0) come inside the mod; nothing extra is downloaded for them.
• Your voice is processed in memory and never saved. Nothing is sent anywhere unless you choose the Groq engine yourself.
• Install it on both client and server. Players without the mod are simply never asked.
• Offline speech works on Windows x64, Linux x64, macOS and 64-bit Android launchers (Pojav, Zalith, FoldCraft). On other systems you can still use Groq or typing.
• The interface is translated into 24 languages.
• Norwegian is heard offline too, with NB-Whisper from the National Library of Norway (about 55 MB, downloaded once from Hugging Face), and Hungarian, Swedish and Finnish with Whisper small (about 190 MB, shared by the three).

Versions

• Fabric: 26.3, 26.1.2, 1.21.10, 1.20.1 (needs Fabric API)
• NeoForge: 26.3, 1.21.1
• Forge: 26.3, 1.20.1

This is a beta. If something doesn't hear you right or breaks, let me know in the comments and tell me which language and version you're on.