RSS Feeds
Find Out How It's Said at Forvo
Posted by Adam Pash at 7:00 AM on April 4, 2008
Find out how to say a word you're unfamiliar with at web site Forvo. Aiming to one day have "all the words in the world pronounced"—including words in 23 languages—Forvo relies on users to generate both words in demand and the proper pronunciations of those words. So you could, for example, check out the pronunciation of different cities, and if you can't find the city whose pronunciation you're uncertain of, just head to the add a word page and put in a request for the word you want. Alternately, you can head to the pronounce page to record pronunciations of words you know. Forvo has a simple aim, but it's a great idea for harnessing a bit of social web power.
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
There are currently no AU comments for this post.
Deprong Mori
Posted 8:00 AM 4/4/08
For American English, stick with Merriam-Webster. It's free and doesn't require registration.
Deprong Mori
ribex
Posted 7:56 AM 4/4/08
Seems a little silly that they wouldn't have used a dictionary as a basis (even if only for a handful of languages). Not only would thousands and thousands of words already be listed on the site, but pronunciations would be printed.
I checked a few of the English words out, and some of them were spoken by heavily-accented speakers. I'm sure the pronunciation will improve with time. But are they going to keep all pronunciations, with the highest-rated at the top, or what?
ribex
skatanic
Posted 7:54 AM 4/4/08
No "a" or "the"
skatanic
joelena
Posted 7:50 AM 4/4/08
@urmston: The pronunciations so far are those requested by users. There are only 207 words in English so far, and it seems that registered users can add more pronunciations to a word.
joelena
urmston
Posted 7:35 AM 4/4/08
Looks promising, but there are a few things that caught my eye.
1. Words like "default" and "focused" are in the list of top pronunciations. Not really sure why we need these when there are plenty of other words with harder pronunciations. Granted, "focused" might throw off some non-native speakers, but "default" is kind of hard to mispronounce seeing as how it there is no proper way (I can think of at least two ways) to say it. This leads me to my second point.
2. There is no inclusion of regional dialects. For example, "Nevada" is also in the Top Ten and is a word with at least two distinct pronunciations. The local way (nəˈvæ.də, first "a" sounds like the "a" in "bad") is included, but the pronunciation used just about everywhere else in the world (nəˈvɑ.də, the "a" sounds more like an "o") is not, nor is the ambiguity the word's pronunciation mentioned.
Nevertheless, this site will be very useful when it starts fixing the kinks and I will do my part to improve the content.
urmston
SenorDunda
Posted 7:31 AM 4/4/08
That's pretty cool. It's like what Midomi.com is for songs, only in reverse.
SenorDunda
fuzzycuffs
Posted 8:35 AM 4/4/08
Ha, there's only one word for Japanese (samui, cold), and it isn't even pronounced all that well. :p
fuzzycuffs
ribex
Posted 8:15 AM 4/4/08
"lifehacker" added...
ribex
dedalusjmmr
Posted 9:00 AM 4/4/08
From a Portuguese (European) point of view: it seems like people are using this mainly for dirty words (mostly with a Brazillian pronunciation, in the case of Portuguese words).
I guess we're all big kids, but this may grow like Wikipedia after all those words are covered :)
dedalusjmmr
MikeSims
Posted 10:34 AM 4/4/08
One of the issues I've already seen also include the difference between American and English speakers of English. The word router (as in a piece of hardware) was pronounced by an English speaker as rooter. Although in the use, I've heard route pronounced as rowt and root, I've never heard of the device called by that.
Another anonymous speaker called mysql like My - Sequel which is technically wrong, although I even say it that way.
And yeah, the regional pronunciations are going to get it hard.
MikeSims
Tracy Poff
Posted 10:39 AM 4/4/08
Wiktionary, a collaboratively written dictionary and a project of the Wikimedia foundation, which also runs Wikipedia, includes audio pronunciation of many words, as well as written IPA pronunciations. See, for example, Nevada.
There are already thousands of pronounced words, and many with multiple audio pronunciations available where appropriate. Users are encouraged to help out at Wiktionary, and one way to do that is by adding pronunciations, if you're so inclined. It can take a little while to get used to the project, but I've always found the members helpful when I've had questions, so if you've an urge to show off your speaking skills, I'd recommend taking a look.
Tracy Poff
Xoke
Posted 1:10 PM 4/4/08
There is a similar website for open source projects at Say OSS. If you know how to say a name you can submit it.
Xoke
asurroca
Posted 3:19 PM 4/4/08
Sounds interesting, like an audio wiki. Shame it's too new to have too many pronunciations.
asurroca
Forvo
Posted 8:50 AM 4/4/08
Hi everyone. Thanks for the comments.
Obviously, we have in mind a lot of things to improve like the ones you mentioned. Pronunciations by sex, location or other are on their way.
About the dictionary, it´s not our focus, we also like to have "house" pronounced but you can find that in several places or asking a teacher. But you can´t find Flickr, Renee Zellweger or IKEA (check that, i´ve found today i was wrong!)
- Deprong mori: Forvo is free and it doesn´t require registration.
Hope to hear you soon!
Forvo
longbourne
Posted 7:07 AM 5/4/08
*
[howjsay.com] is what I've used for a while.
*
...in conjunction with LookItUp2 as an instant pronunciation check. It's reasonably complete (96,000 words), and has many borrowed words that are in common use.
longbourne