Review of PRONUNCIATOR.com
Web, MP4, App, Pronunciation scored, Cheap for 1-2 months, ★★★★★
Pronunciator has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages. Beginners in each language can choose easy subjects (like numbers or animals), and the site slowly speaks numbers 1-30, then by tens to 100, or names the animals, and pauses for you to repeat, while showing pictures so you know what each foreign word means. Explanations to learn any of the languages are available in the other 71 languages. Pronunciator is $30 per month for US customers, other prices in other countries. It is free through some libraries, so ask your library.
Under Drills/Pronunciation Analysis, the site can listen and score your pronunciation. I recommend students start here, specifically with the drop down menus for Core Vocabulary and Numbers. Click the spelling on the screen to hide it, and just listen, wait for the red light, then repeat. Your rising scores encourage you to continue. The system gave me appropriate low scores in Arabic, which I do not speak, until I practiced enough to get middling scores, so it can help and motivate beginners. It gave me an occasional 100% for my intermediate Spanish accent, so its standard is not strict, and it may not help you polish an intermediate accent to an excellent one.
Pronunciator has a very attractive graph of pitch, as musical notes; it is under a triangle ► at the far right of the Drills tab . Transparent has a variety of graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which may give you more guidance, but Pronunciator lets you choose topics you want, so if you can afford both, get them.
Pronunciator is a good site for beginners and intermediate learners, because of the pronunciation feedback and the range of topics. Beginners do best to start with topics where pictures clearly show the meaning, and spellings can be hidden (by clicking the spelling on the screen): numbers, animals, colors, eating utensils, furniture, home appliances, bathroom, kitchen, insects, light sources, musical instruments, nationalities, shapes, tools, vehicles. Spelling normally distracts you from good pronunciation, since your mind tries to pronounce letters as they would be pronounced in your language. However the spelling is available to clarify whether the speaker is saying b, p, v, etc. Even for Chinese there is a Pinyin option, giving Roman letters which help with consonants, and accents which show tones (explained in free FSI and BBC courses and graphed in Transparent and Tellmemore courses).
While subscribing you can download an hour per month of sound files to listen on the go, which you then own even if you drop the subscription. These audio files have a large amount of English explanation, since the lessons are not designed with sound effects to show what the words mean. Thus the sound files make your brain switch constantly between English and the target language, which unfortunately makes it harder to learn and develop a good accent. After you choose a lesson from the drop down menus in Pronunciator, you can go to the Audio tab to download that lesson. It comes with .m4a extension, which means an audio MP4 file. If your player recognizes .mp4, but not .m4a, you can change the extension; the internal coding is the same.
Pronunciator conjugates 99 verbs, with 8 forms (I, you, he, she, it, we, you-plural, they) in present, past and future tenses. They have many brief conversations, which are for intermediate learners, since they go fast.
Students can choose any topic, depending on interests and need. Pronunciator says it has 80 languages, since it counts regional variations of some languages, noted in this site's List of Language Courses.
The main competitor which has good pronunciation scoring is Transparent ($25-40 for unlimited time in 76 languages). Transparent costs less, has more detailed feedback on pronunciation, and grammatical explanations of each word, but it starts with complicated artificial conversations, does not let you choose topics, and does not conjugate verbs. Pronunciator lets you start with very simple words like numbers, which are easier for learning good pronunciation, and then you can choose more advanced topics. After you learn good pronunciation with Transparent or Pronunciator, there are other free or inexpensive programs with 4 or 5 stars to expand your vocabulary and grammar.
The main competitor which lets you pick topics to study is Book2 (free), but it has no feedback on pronunciation, and has less vocabulary. For example on medical terms, Pronunciator goes from ache, acne, aids, allergy, ambulance, to vaccination, vitamin, wheel chair, and x-ray. If you need medical care abroad, you really need practitioners who speak your language or hire a translator, but for times when the translator is not there, you can download (Audio tab) medical terms and learn some to track the babel around you. Even if you speak the language, you may not know all these terms, so you can learn them when needed.
The site was founded by Robert Savage, a former employee of McKinsey, who hired translators and native speakers to provide the range of languages.The site lists 72 languages, including multiple dialects of some languages such as Chinese.
Web, MP4, App, Pronunciation scored, Cheap for 1-2 months, ★★★★★
Pronunciator has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages. Beginners in each language can choose easy subjects (like numbers or animals), and the site slowly speaks numbers 1-30, then by tens to 100, or names the animals, and pauses for you to repeat, while showing pictures so you know what each foreign word means. Explanations to learn any of the languages are available in the other 71 languages. Pronunciator is $30 per month for US customers, other prices in other countries. It is free through some libraries, so ask your library.
Under Drills/Pronunciation Analysis, the site can listen and score your pronunciation. I recommend students start here, specifically with the drop down menus for Core Vocabulary and Numbers. Click the spelling on the screen to hide it, and just listen, wait for the red light, then repeat. Your rising scores encourage you to continue. The system gave me appropriate low scores in Arabic, which I do not speak, until I practiced enough to get middling scores, so it can help and motivate beginners. It gave me an occasional 100% for my intermediate Spanish accent, so its standard is not strict, and it may not help you polish an intermediate accent to an excellent one.
Pronunciator has a very attractive graph of pitch, as musical notes; it is under a triangle ► at the far right of the Drills tab . Transparent has a variety of graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which may give you more guidance, but Pronunciator lets you choose topics you want, so if you can afford both, get them.
Pronunciator is a good site for beginners and intermediate learners, because of the pronunciation feedback and the range of topics. Beginners do best to start with topics where pictures clearly show the meaning, and spellings can be hidden (by clicking the spelling on the screen): numbers, animals, colors, eating utensils, furniture, home appliances, bathroom, kitchen, insects, light sources, musical instruments, nationalities, shapes, tools, vehicles. Spelling normally distracts you from good pronunciation, since your mind tries to pronounce letters as they would be pronounced in your language. However the spelling is available to clarify whether the speaker is saying b, p, v, etc. Even for Chinese there is a Pinyin option, giving Roman letters which help with consonants, and accents which show tones (explained in free FSI and BBC courses and graphed in Transparent and Tellmemore courses).
While subscribing you can download an hour per month of sound files to listen on the go, which you then own even if you drop the subscription. These audio files have a large amount of English explanation, since the lessons are not designed with sound effects to show what the words mean. Thus the sound files make your brain switch constantly between English and the target language, which unfortunately makes it harder to learn and develop a good accent. After you choose a lesson from the drop down menus in Pronunciator, you can go to the Audio tab to download that lesson. It comes with .m4a extension, which means an audio MP4 file. If your player recognizes .mp4, but not .m4a, you can change the extension; the internal coding is the same.
Pronunciator conjugates 99 verbs, with 8 forms (I, you, he, she, it, we, you-plural, they) in present, past and future tenses. They have many brief conversations, which are for intermediate learners, since they go fast.
Students can choose any topic, depending on interests and need. Pronunciator says it has 80 languages, since it counts regional variations of some languages, noted in this site's List of Language Courses.
The main competitor which has good pronunciation scoring is Transparent ($25-40 for unlimited time in 76 languages). Transparent costs less, has more detailed feedback on pronunciation, and grammatical explanations of each word, but it starts with complicated artificial conversations, does not let you choose topics, and does not conjugate verbs. Pronunciator lets you start with very simple words like numbers, which are easier for learning good pronunciation, and then you can choose more advanced topics. After you learn good pronunciation with Transparent or Pronunciator, there are other free or inexpensive programs with 4 or 5 stars to expand your vocabulary and grammar.
The main competitor which lets you pick topics to study is Book2 (free), but it has no feedback on pronunciation, and has less vocabulary. For example on medical terms, Pronunciator goes from ache, acne, aids, allergy, ambulance, to vaccination, vitamin, wheel chair, and x-ray. If you need medical care abroad, you really need practitioners who speak your language or hire a translator, but for times when the translator is not there, you can download (Audio tab) medical terms and learn some to track the babel around you. Even if you speak the language, you may not know all these terms, so you can learn them when needed.
The site was founded by Robert Savage, a former employee of McKinsey, who hired translators and native speakers to provide the range of languages.The site lists 72 languages, including multiple dialects of some languages such as Chinese.
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