The web is just great. Where else do you have these great resources…

Forvo: the pronunciation guide
If you want to know how a word in another language is correctly spelled you only have to visit Forvo where native speakers from around the world upload speech samples.

WordReference.com
THE online translation dictionary is WordReference.com with many examples, pronunciation guides and different languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian,…)

The Free Dictionary
The Free Dictionary is a thorough online dictionary also with many different languages. It includes a Thesaurus, Acronyms. You can even search for famous sayings.

In effort to keep the tradition of foreign languages in Language Academy, my morning mixed group of 6th-8th graders  created a Food Podcast of their favorite foods. The project required them to find an audio translator on the Internet of their foreign language of choice. Some students used Babylon and others used Forvo for language translation. Then they created slides on PowerPoint of their favorite foods. Using GarageBand, they put together the slides and created a podcast translating the food into their foreign language. It was a multitasking lesson that required students to use various software to produce a foreign language project. Students choose languages ranging from Tagalog, to Swahili, to Arabic.

I decided I wanted to study German. I love language study, but I find myself always trying to get back into it (usually attempting to brush up on my French, but occasionally dallying with Spanish, Portuguese, and Russian) and failing, because I haven’t a concrete motivation. But this time I do: I’m in grad school, and if I want to enter a PhD program in drama, I’ll need reading knowledge of at least one language beyond English. My advisor, herself a theatre history PhD, supported my decision, because apparently German is “the language of drama” – meaning that, other than English, it’s the go-to tongue for theatrical scholarship (not to mention the native language of one of my favorite playwright-theorists, Bertolt Brecht).

That said, Texas State does not offer a German for Reading/Translation course at the graduate level. And since I’m going to be on campus five days a week next semester, I decided to turn to my friend Niki. Niki works for a German language and cultural institute, and has been studying German for more than fifteen years. She’s the most fluent non-native German speaker I know. I’d been considering taking a distance language course through her employer, but she recommended I just pick up copies of some of the books they use for reading/translation courses. So I did. I’m sitting with a copy of German for Reading Knowledge right now.

Once nice thing about self-study, other than the fact that I can obviously set my own pace, is that I can take the time to look up every last thing that confuses me. I’m a pretty good writer, but I admit that I’m not very good at talking about grammar. I know why things are the way they are, in English, but the second I cracked this book and saw the word “case,” I drew a blank. Aside from turning to good ol’ Wikipedia (while useless for some research, it’s a fantastic source of relatively detailed general knowledge info like this), I found an amazing, new-to-me Web site: Forvo. This site contains audio files of “every word, in every language” – or, at least, that’s what they’re working towards. And major languages, like German, are really well covered. So I can satisfy my need to learn to read in German, while also fulfilling my desire to speak German well enough to get by. So cool!

Now to go read up on “synthetic language.”

English is a fairly ubiquitous language across business sectors and throughout the Web. However, if you are like me, you occasionally stumble onto information or received communication that is written in a language you don’t read or speak. How do you cope?

ReadWriteWeb offers  five translation tools to shine a light on your linguistic darkness. The include the crowdsourced Forvo with audio clips; Babel Fish, capable of translating large chunks of text as well as URLs; my personal go-to Google Translate, which also works in Gmail; the useful TweetTranslate, which integrates into your profile and works on Twitter updates; and, BabelWith.Me, a chat translator.

Don’t let a little bump like language difference prevent you from fully exploring the Web and connecting with others – the World is shrinking and these translation tools can help speed the process!

In a previous post I discussed Forvo, an online database for teaching and learning pronunciation.  In a similar collaborative resource approach, a group at George Mason University maintains an archive of speech accents for English, spoken by both native and non-native speakers of English from around the world.

Each speaker records the same paragraph of English text, allowing comparative studies such as contrastive analysis of different language groups.  This “elicitation paragraph” has been constructed to contain most of the sounds used in common English, together with some words that use “difficult sounds and sound sequences”.

The site is collaborative in that it solicits recordings from its visitors (described as “remote researchers”) and provides a detailed set of instructions for making high quality recordings for inclusion in the archive. Samples must be 44.1 KHz., 16-bit mono recordings and each sample is vetted by the GMU archive team, cosisting of qualified linguists.  Samples also need a signoff by subjects, ensuring that all required ethical conditions have been met.  These include a minimal age of 18 and an understanding of how the recording will be used, etc.

One nice touch about this site is the Atlas page, allowing visitors to browse accents by geographic region. I couldn’t resist checking out a regional accent for Sydney, Australia.  To my ear, the provided sample sounds like a caricature of Australian English, more like a exagerrated version of Paul Hogan’s speech than a typical Sydneysider.

Here’s a great example of a collaborative online resource that relies on its users for most of its content – not unlike the model used by Wikipedia:

Forvo is an online pronunciation resource that is built by its many users. It currently has a database of 210 languages including all major western, african and asian languages and some more obscure ones such as; Occitan (Southern France), Hawaiian, Sudanese (East Africa) and Quechua (Peru). The total number of words currently held is 203,463 but only around 66% of these (133,030) have recorded pronunciations so far. The site lists words awaiting pronunciation recordings as “pending”, and encourages users to add their own recorded pronunciation of the word.  The recorded file is tagged with the user’s location so that anyone using the guide has an idea of how likely the recording is to be influenced by regional accents or dialects.  Someone fromn North Carolina, for example, would probably pronounce “house” rather differently from a resident of Manchester in the UK.  For this reason, Forvo encourages its users to add their own pronunciation of a word, even if a recording already exists.

Forvo es una web 2.0 vertical dedicada a la pronunciación de palabras, surgida a principios del 2008, y con un crecimiento  imparable.

La dinámica es muy sencilla: consiste en buscar una palabra en un idioma dado (por ejemplo, “casa“) y escuchar cómo lo pronuncia/n el/los hablante/s que ha/n efectuado la entrada. Como usuario registrado podemos añadir palabras (y su pronunciación) o, si creemos que alguna palabra no se ha enunciado con la corrección debida, añadir la nuestra. El habitual sistema de puntuaciones hace el resto.

Forvo ha adaptado a su vez el API de Google Maps para que podamos localizar dónde se ha realizado la pronunciación (o las pronunciaciones) de la palabra elegida. Pero cuidado, aunque resulte una herramienta vistosa (y que prefigura la relación geografía/ cultura/pronunciación), puede inducir a error cuando quien ha efectuado la entrada sea habitante de una ciudad, pero oriundo de otra (por ejemplo, he escuchado la pronunciación de la palabra “casa“, enunciada por un portugués afincado en Barcelona).

Tal vez lo peor de este magnífico proyecto  (que, eso sí, aún está en beta) sea la categorización de las palabras (un tanto difusa),  y las búsquedas (poco precisas).

Ya dispone de más de 8.700 usuarios registrados. ¿Serás el siguiente?

This is way cool.  I just checked back with Forvo, a website for listening to words pronounced in their own languages. Last week I posted the name of Jordan’s King Abdullah II ( الملك عبد الله الثاني بن الحسين) to be pronounced by a native speaker.  Already someone from Jordan has made a recording of the pronunciation. Thanks, lkurdi!

Here’s a breakdown of the Arabic, in case you don’t want to go to the effort with google translate:

الملك king (malik, actually al-malik if you include the definite article)

عبد الله Abdullah (two separate words عبد adb slave or servant and الله Allah,  God–it is forbidden to name anyone “slave” without adding “God” or a name of God). It looks like separate word here, but is actually one word, because the letter dahl د does not connect to any letter that follows it.

الثاني  the second (ithani, actually al-ithani with the definite article)

بن son of (bin, technially ibin ابن is son )

الحسين Hussein (al-Hussein or  “the Hussein”– of course this would be the late King Hussein, Abdullah’s father)

Right now I feel like I could just reach out and touch Jordan.

The Hungarian Language is officially called “Magyar” and is an Uralic Language. It’s interesting to note that Magyar shares no characteristics with the languages of Hungary’s bordering countries. Makes me wonder how the language diffused in that part of the world, but also explains why many people I know who have traveled to Hungary say it is just really difficult for them to communicate.

I get pretty specific of things I want to know in a foreign language when I travel there. It’s important to know that Hungarians use their Surname first, then their Given Name UNLESS they are referring to a foreigner or translating a native’ speaker’s name. They also publish dates in the Year. Month. Date. system. So, the date of this post would be 2009. January 5 (or better yet 2009. január 5).

Numbers and polite phrases are a must when you travel. Let’s take a look at that right now. Click on a word to go Forvo.com and hear the pronunciation.

• Hello = Jó napot
• Goodbye = viszontlátásra
• Yes = Igen
• No = Nem
• Thank you = Köszönöm
• You’re welcome = Szívesen
• Please = Kérem
• Zero = nulla
• One = egy
• Two = kettö
• Three = három
• Four = négy
• Five = öt
• Six = hat
• Seven = hét
• Eight = nyolc
• Nine = kilenc
• Ten = tíz

I thought this was a very cool site – - and especially for those who either want to study different languages or would like to help those who do.  In any case, I hope you at least visit the site and check ‘em out!!

“Forvo’s a Web database with a single, insanely ambitious goal: to collect the proper pronunciation of every word, in every language, on the planet.

Here’s how it works: Userssubmit a word or a name they’d like to hear spoken in its native tongue. Don’t know how to say the name of the Brazilian dance xaxado? A local named Brazguy can help! And you, too, can help, by recording an mp3 and answering someone else’s query: As of this writing, there are 104,429 words in 190 languages, but only half of them have audio pronunciations. If you know how to pronounce the name of British rocker Midge Ure, please visit the site immediately — they’re in dire need of your assistance.” – - VSL

 http://forvo.com/

Forvo opettaa lausumaan kieliä, kerrotaan uutisissa. Sisältö Forvoon kerätään käyttäjiltä hieman Wikipedian tyyliin. Lue uutisista lisää.

در حقیقت این مطلب رو تو پست قبلی می خواستم بدم ولی گفتم اول اگه از اون بگم بهتر باشه

خب واسه معنی لغات که یه چیز خوب گیر آوردیم! اما واسه تلفظ چی؟!

خیلی از افراد، واسه تلفظ به احتمال زیاد از همون Babylon یا MS Text to Speech استفاده می کنن.

تا حالا با شده با خودتون فکر کرده باشین که خب ممکنه بلاخره این برنامه ها هم اشتباه کنن؟! بله! چون بر اساس تکنیک هوش مصنوعی عمل تلفظ رو انجام میدن و تلفظ گاهی اوقات جالب نیست و اصولا چیزی ازش نمیشه فهمید.

خب Forvo رو خدا ساخته واسه همین دیگه

یک سایت یا بهتر بگیم یه سیستم نوپا و قوی که می تونین خیلی راحت، کلمه مورد نظر رو وارد کنید و تلفظ اون رو در هر زبانی که دوست دارین بشنوید…

نکته حائز اهمیتی که در فروو هست اینه که برای هر لغت، نیازی به دانلود صوت نیست، و عملیات دانلود به صورت پیش صفحه (in Background) انجام میشه و شما با کلیک روی دکمه Play قادر خواهید بود خیلی سریع صوت رو گوش کنید. همچنین می توانید MP3 هر تلفظ رو، در صورت نیاز دانلود کنید.

طبق گفته خود سایت، فوروو در سال 2007 با شعار «تمام لغات در جهان» (All the words in the world)، به دنیا اومده و یک پروژه ی خصوصی است.

امکاناتی رو هم گفته به زودی اضافه خواهد کرد:

نسخه اسپانیایی سایت

افزودن تلفظ ناحیه ای (لحجه ای)

ایجاد نسخه موبایل

از دیگر خصوصیات این سایت، امکان نظر سنجی (رای گیری) و دادن امتیاز به کاربران است…

اگر شما هم یک میکروفن دارید، همین الان برید توی سایت و کلماتی رو که وجود نداره رو تلفظ کنید تا سهمی در میان هزاران کاربر این سایت داشته باشید…

آدرس سایت: www.Forvo.com

a grande rasgos le cuento los mas importante, pues despues de mucho tiempo les comento que al fin me han enviado mi titulo de L.I, con lo que podré terminar la tesis de la maestría y titularme quizá para septiembre, ademas aquí en mi nuevo empleo me ofrecen la posibilidad de un doctorado, lo cual es bastante bueno, entre otras cosas he pensado en cambiar de vehiculo y sacar alguno nuevo, ya veremos cual con el tiempo, alguna noche recibí una llamada de una personita que me dio mucho gusto escuchar, aunque duro solo unos segundos y fue demasio breve, pues las verdades son duras, hace unos dias me encontre a un compañero de años, con quien he compartido mucho de mi vida, y en estos 2 dias que han seguido me he encontrado con mas amistades que ya no veia desde hace mucho tiempo, me hubiera gustado tener una cámara, pero ya tendré una proximamente.

Mi nuevo trabajo consiste en hacer estaditicas, pronosticos, graficas, algo parecido a lo que hace INEGI, solo que a nivel institucional, aun no he automatizado nada, pero cuando tenga codigo no dudan que será publicado en esta página. Pienso que igualmente necesitare utilizar Visual basic, pues en las normas esta prohibido utilizar aplicaciones web, enfocadas a la comparticion de base de datos, claro no dicen nada de aplicaciones de escritorio, jejeje, pero ya veremos.

saludos a todos los lectores, no se olviden de visitar forvo.com y añadir frases.

Quante volte capita di leggere una parola e non sapere la sua esatta pronuncia?
Da oggi FORVO ci aiuterà. Il sito è una piccola community dove gli utenti danno voce alle parole.
Per ascoltare non è necessario essere membri, basta solo cercare la parola e… ascoltare.
Invece se si partecipa al progetto si può richiedere la pronuncia di una parola specifica, in modo tale che i madrelingua inizino a lavorare dalle parole più richieste.

Recientemente he descubierto una web muy interesante, una de esas ideas que sólo se podrían llevar a cabo con la colaboración de todos los internautas, como ocurre con la Wikipedia. La web es forvo.com. En esta web podremos encontrar pronunciaciones en multitud de idiomas por personas nativas que aportan su voz a la base de datos. Así, podremos saber no sólo cómo se pronuncian las palabras, sino también los nombres propios o nombres de ciudades. ¿Cómo pronuncia Michael Jackson un alemán? ¿Cómo se pronuncia París en francés?

La web es reciente y todavía las entradas de las que va disponiendo son limitadas, pronto irá creciendo, también gracias a nuestras propias aportaciones. También podemos corregir alguna voz si consideramos que nosotros podemos pronunciarlo mejor. Una gran idea para los que aprenden idiomas, aunque no nos convence la licencia de la página, que debería de ser GNU en lugar de licencia Creative Commons en favor de Forvo.

Forvo es una curiosa web donde descubrir cómo se pronuncian palabras en idiomas extranjeros. Muy útil, a mi modo de ver, para presentadores de informativos, locutores de radio, etc… que se las ven y se las desean para pronunciar como dios manda los nombres de deportistas, políticos y artistas internacionales.

Bueno, y también sirve para escuchar a un ordenador diciendo palabrotas, que es lo primero que todos buscamos…