Review of PRONUNCIATOR.com
Web, MP4, App, Pronunciation scored, Free, ★★★★ in USA. Not available in rest of world.
This is only accessible if your library in the USA and Canada subscribes. Your library will tell you how to log in. It has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages. It is free state-wide in Texas (TexShare), North Carolina (NC LIVE), Louisiana, and Arkansas (Traveler).
App: "Pronunciator" needs a constant data connection.
You can choose lessons in any order. Inside each lesson (drop-down menus) you have to study words in order. Click to repeat a word or phrase as often as you need.
It offers structured lessons, beginner to advanced. At the top of the list is the "Main Course." At the bottom is basic vocabulary for health care workers.
"Main Course" has Core Vocabulary (100 categories like computers), Powerful Phrases (50 travel categories like money), and 100 Verbs conjugated. Beginners 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.
An excellent feature in the Main Course is the Songs (tab called "ProRadio"), very clearly sung, and it shows lyrics to help you learn (Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish).
Videos (drop down menu item called "ProFlix") with subtitles let you repeat any phrase you want to learn in some languages.
The Audio tab lets you download lessons, though they have a lot of distracting explanation in your own language (Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Urdu, not English).
Another excellent feature is to listen and score pronunciation, under Main Course / Drills / Pronunciation Analysis. 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 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.
It also lets you record and compare your voice to teachers.
Health vocabulary, grammar, and a class for the US Citizenship exam are in the first menu (same page as language selection in the App).
Pronunciator has a graph of pitch, as musical notes; it is under the word Pitch, at the far right of the Main Course Drills tab. It only gives one or two notes per syllable, so it is not detailed enough to show the rising and falling tones of Chinese. Also, the notes do not always match the voice: Merci beaucoup shows rising notes, but the speaker goes down at the end. If you have a Windows computer with Windows 8 or earlier, Transparent has more detailed graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which gives you more guidance.
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).
The main competitor which has good pronunciation scoring is limited to old computers with Windows 8 or earlier: 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 competitors which lets you pick topics to study are 50 Languages and Internet Polyglot, but they have no feedback on pronunciation, and have 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 learn some medical terms 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.
A PDF file compares Lessons from Lang1234, 50 Languages, Pronunciator, and Internet Polyglot.
Web, MP4, App, Pronunciation scored, Free, ★★★★ in USA. Not available in rest of world.
This is only accessible if your library in the USA and Canada subscribes. Your library will tell you how to log in. It has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages. It is free state-wide in Texas (TexShare), North Carolina (NC LIVE), Louisiana, and Arkansas (Traveler).
App: "Pronunciator" needs a constant data connection.
You can choose lessons in any order. Inside each lesson (drop-down menus) you have to study words in order. Click to repeat a word or phrase as often as you need.
It offers structured lessons, beginner to advanced. At the top of the list is the "Main Course." At the bottom is basic vocabulary for health care workers.
"Main Course" has Core Vocabulary (100 categories like computers), Powerful Phrases (50 travel categories like money), and 100 Verbs conjugated. Beginners 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.
An excellent feature in the Main Course is the Songs (tab called "ProRadio"), very clearly sung, and it shows lyrics to help you learn (Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Serbian, Spanish and Swedish).
Videos (drop down menu item called "ProFlix") with subtitles let you repeat any phrase you want to learn in some languages.
The Audio tab lets you download lessons, though they have a lot of distracting explanation in your own language (Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, French, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Sinhala, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Turkish, and Urdu, not English).
Another excellent feature is to listen and score pronunciation, under Main Course / Drills / Pronunciation Analysis. 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 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.
It also lets you record and compare your voice to teachers.
Health vocabulary, grammar, and a class for the US Citizenship exam are in the first menu (same page as language selection in the App).
Pronunciator has a graph of pitch, as musical notes; it is under the word Pitch, at the far right of the Main Course Drills tab. It only gives one or two notes per syllable, so it is not detailed enough to show the rising and falling tones of Chinese. Also, the notes do not always match the voice: Merci beaucoup shows rising notes, but the speaker goes down at the end. If you have a Windows computer with Windows 8 or earlier, Transparent has more detailed graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which gives you more guidance.
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).
The main competitor which has good pronunciation scoring is limited to old computers with Windows 8 or earlier: 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 competitors which lets you pick topics to study are 50 Languages and Internet Polyglot, but they have no feedback on pronunciation, and have 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 learn some medical terms 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.
A PDF file compares Lessons from Lang1234, 50 Languages, Pronunciator, and Internet Polyglot.
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