Wednesday, 20 January 2016

Forvo: All the words in the world. Pronounced.


Forvo is an interestingly specific tool that I have recently come across that acts as an online pronunciation database.  Whilst I suspect that this tool will be more interesting to linguists than beginner learners, there are certainly applications for all levels of interest.

Sure, most online dictionaries these days have sound files attached to their entries, but Forvo allows users to explore pronunciations further.  Upon signing up users are asked to state their native language and the area that best represents their accent, meaning that you can listen to multiple pronunciations of the same word, knowing where in the accent spectrum that user's pronunciation lies.  This is not insignificant.  Think of the differences in pronunciation of the word "four" being spoken in, as an example, an Northern Irish or a Black Country accent.  Imagine the difficulties that the differing vowel sounds could present a foreign speaker with!

Forvo shows pronunciations and the location of the speaker.

Furthermore, imagine that you are learning a less common language that comes with fewer online learning opportunities.  There might not be as many words in Forvo for that language comparably with English or German, for example, but any that you can find are that much more valuable if your target language is less widely present in the online learning field.  The languages available in Forvo are numerous.  To name a few less common examples to the casual learner, Forvo boasts over 100,000 words of Tatar and over 10,000 words of Bashkir, Urdu and Azerbaijani.

Forvo's advantages do, however, come with their drawbacks.  The site is set up as a "wiki", meaning that content does rely on user input, so can never be 100% reliable.  Forvo do give users the option, however, to rate pronunciations as "good" or "bad".  With enough input this should enable users to differentiate which is the most trustworthy pronunciation, but for now there don't seem to be many ratings in place.  I imagine the site could benefit from a few more users for this to function better.  Many words do already have multiple interpretations, though, as well as whole phrases to offer context, so there is usually the option for the user to compare these and they should be able to filter the rotten apples out themselves, in most cases.

recording pronunciations to add to the Forvo database is very user-friendly

A couple of extra features worth mentioning:

After recording pronunciations, or upon navigating to the "Pronounce" page, Forvo will actually advertise which words and phrases are missing from your native language in its database.  These are often strange and can be, well, fairly amusing, as evidenced below.


Pronunciations can also be tagged to be added to groups.  These can be anything from names of Indian festivals to Tennis Players.  Being more of a football fan myself, I may start rallying for a Football Players group.  Maybe then, finally, our pundits can have a definitive guide for all those tricky foreign pronunciations!

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