Review of PRONUNCIATOR.com
Web, MP4, App, Pronunciation scored, Free, ★★★
This is only accessible if your library in the USA subscribes. Your library will tell you how to log in. It has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages.
After you pick a language it offers structured lessons, beginner to advanced. At the bottom they include a course in basic vocabulary for health care workers.
Or slide the selection to the top of the initial list of lessons, and choose "Main Course" which lets you choose vocabulary which interests you. Categories include Powerful Phrases (with about 50 travel categories like telephone or beach), Core Vocabulary (100 categories like animals or computers), and Verb Conjugations. Lessons sometimes have too much narration, and there is usually a button to suppress it.
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 50 languages.
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 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 the word Pitch, at the far right of the 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. Transparent has more detailed graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which may give you more guidance, but Pronunciator lets you choose topics you want, so if you can get both, do so.
Under the "Main Course," some languages have movies, with subtitles. They let you loop any phrase you want to learn. You are hearing the rhythm and accent of actual actors in context.
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 app lets you download lessons to listen on the go. 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.
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, Free, ★★★
This is only accessible if your library in the USA subscribes. Your library will tell you how to log in. It has words spoken by native speakers in 72 languages.
After you pick a language it offers structured lessons, beginner to advanced. At the bottom they include a course in basic vocabulary for health care workers.
Or slide the selection to the top of the initial list of lessons, and choose "Main Course" which lets you choose vocabulary which interests you. Categories include Powerful Phrases (with about 50 travel categories like telephone or beach), Core Vocabulary (100 categories like animals or computers), and Verb Conjugations. Lessons sometimes have too much narration, and there is usually a button to suppress it.
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 50 languages.
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 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 the word Pitch, at the far right of the 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. Transparent has more detailed graphs on pitch, vowels, consonants, etc, which may give you more guidance, but Pronunciator lets you choose topics you want, so if you can get both, do so.
Under the "Main Course," some languages have movies, with subtitles. They let you loop any phrase you want to learn. You are hearing the rhythm and accent of actual actors in context.
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 app lets you download lessons to listen on the go. 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.
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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