
Founder with an accent? Free offer from SayAfter.me - znt
http://www.sayafter.me/hacker-news
======
gojomo
Coming this fall to the Mountain View Community Playhouse, a classic musical
updated for today's Valley:

 _My Fair Founder_

Can master symbolicist Henry Higgins (played by Paul Graham in his first
musical-theater role) win a bet by coaching ambitious but crude-speaking Eliza
Doolittle to be the toast of Sand Hill Road in three short months?

You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll sing along to tunes such as:

 _The Gain in this Domain stays Mainly with the Brain_

...and...

 _I 've Grown Accustomed to Her Viral Growth Pace_

~~~
dylangs1030
My girlfriend works in Broadway. I wish she knew enough about the recent
foreign accents thing to find this as funny as I do. Well done.

~~~
gojomo
Thanks! To help those who know the recent kerfluffle moreso than _My Fair
Lady_ :

"Why Can't The English Learn To Speak"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg)

~~~
Killah911
LOL, he says "your language is the language of Shakespeare, Milton and the
Bible"... I wonder if it was meant to be funny , out of ignorance or
arrogance...

As I've posted before, there is this sort of inherent imperialist bias people
have with someone who does not have a good command or English. A hundred years
ago, it may have been an indication of class (and to some degree still is
today). But to look down and be utterly dismissive of someone because they
have an accent is just plain dumb.

In PGs defense, just because someone is dumb doesn't mean people will cease to
engage in such behavior. And given that the entrepreneur is the one on the
selling side, it may behoove him/her to brush up on whichever accent is
appealing to those to be sold.

I personally have several accents in English and I subconsciously switch from
one to another depending on whom I'm speaking with. If necessary I change
languages all together. Reality is, I am better able to connect with the other
person this way.

~~~
ijk
The original play was by George Bernard Shaw. Any commentary on the
absurdities and arrogance of the British class system is deliberate. Though by
"the Bible" he's equally referring to the King James translation, which was
regarded as a major literary influence, on par with Shakespeare.

------
reustle
I watched your intro video and have 2 points to comment on

* "Can I have a spaghetti" isn't the right way to say it. Drop the "a"

* Have a native english speaker read it out, not a computer generated voice (if that isn't already the plan)

~~~
znt
Yeah the video does not have correct grammar in some sentences.

Actual human speech is on the roadmap but not until I fix the main issue,
which is finding a repeatable marketing/sales cycle. Open to suggestions
though!

~~~
yansuck
Good job for the work. But seriously, I don't think you even have a MVP yet.
If the purpose of this site is to correct people's accent, having a generate
voice(huge electronic accent) is not acceptable at all.

~~~
znt
You are right, robotic accents is not helpful (but hilarious though).

This app is mainly aimed at fixing the incorrect pronunciation of words,
rather than the accent. If I ever get to add real human voices, then it will
be even better.

~~~
reustle
You might be able to use mechanical turk to get some cheap proper readings of
text ;)

------
rattray
I couldn't find your pricing anywhere... I'm a native English speaker, so this
product isn't relevant to me, but I wouldn't want be comfortable recommending
it to anyone without knowing how much it'd cost after those first 3 months.
Really critical to have in an easy-to-find place on the website IMO.

~~~
znt
You are right, you have to be logged in to see the subscription page at:
[http://www.sayafter.me/subscriptions/subscribe](http://www.sayafter.me/subscriptions/subscribe).

I will change it to be available for anonymous visitors. Thanks!

~~~
sillysaurus2
Why not just say the price here?

~~~
spader725
consider it a "dark pattern" to trick users
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6301378)

------
billybob255
You might add something on the landing page saying what exactly you do. I read
through everything and it doesn't specify how it'll improve English; is it
just drills? A therapist to coach people? Pronunciation checking software?

~~~
znt
Noted, I tried to use "simple language", so it wouldn't scare off non-
technical people. I think I got it way too simple. Thanks.

~~~
dsrguru
If you simplify an explanation, it still needs to do the explaining, even if
it's in the form of a high-level overview. I don't even see mention of the
dialect you're teaching. Especially since you're targeting people in the STEM
industry (people who tend to value knowledge and precision), I'd recommend
having a more specific description available for those who want, even if it's
not the first message that greets the viewer.

Since we're on the subject of what your software does, and since as a native
English speaker, I don't want to [ab]use your free trial just to study its
workings, could you please provide that explanation here? :) Do you teach the
basics of English phonology or do you just provide [auto-generated] text for
users to mimic. Do you provide Rosetta Stone-like pronunciation feedback? If
you don't provide basic instruction in English phonology, I highly recommend
you consider adding it. Being well versed in articulatory phonetics, I taught
myself Chinese phonology (Standard Mandarin) from Wikipedia. Despite not
having very good Chinese, I've passed for a native speaker in short telephone
conversations on multiple occasions. Even if it takes weeks to give the
student the phonetic background that I had (I don't know if it would), you'll
then be able to give them near-native pronunciation almost instantly, and then
they'll only need to iron out the kinks with your mimic drills before sounding
like a native. I don't know if this is the approach used by most accent
coaches, but it's highly effective.

~~~
znt
Thank you for the detailed information.

The only feedback the user gets is a score for the current phrase, and
highlighting of the words that he has mispronounced.

For example: If the phrase was "Where is the closest hospital?" but you said
"Where is the closest clinic?", the application would highlight correct words
in green and incorrect ones (hospital in this case) in orange/red depending on
the word distance of "clinic" to "hospital")

When I say "word distance" I mean Levenshtein Distance:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Levenshtein_distance)

I never thought about giving basic information about English phonology, but
you make a very valid point. I will look into this further, and please let me
know about any detailed resources about this subject.

------
rabino
"Repetition makes the master". I'd suggest you tweak the UX so I need to
repeat each word / phrase a couple of times before passing to the next level.

Speaking of which... you could gamify this in like 200 different ways.

~~~
znt
That is a very good idea, I will add this option to the current exercise flow.
Thanks!

~~~
vl
It would be really useful to replay what user said, or even better, replay
incorrectly pronounced word and then correct pronunciation. Right now there is
no good way for user to correct mistakes, even if it's clear that there is a
mistake.

~~~
znt
Thanks for the feedback.

Unfortunately currently neither webkit-speech-input nor Web Speech API
supports recording of the user voice input.

I will look for alternative solutions though.

------
oelmekki
A note about prices. I'm in need for such a service and thank you to provide
it.

But $30/month is more that what I would give. For that price, I would expect
to have a human teacher to review my progression from time to time and provide
advices.

At $20/month, I would use the service for something like three or four month,
until I decide I'm ready enough.

At $10/month, I would probably consider a permanent subscription.

~~~
dangrossman
> But $30/month is more that what I would give. For that price, I would expect
> to have a human teacher to review my progression from time to time and
> provide advices.

That's less than half what it'd cost to hire a language tutor for a single
hour.

~~~
oelmekki
That's why I don't speak of having time with a dedicated teacher, but simply
having him/her review a few items (for example, those failed again and again)
and provide a short advice.

------
shibby
What is 'British' English?

No such thing exists really, at least not in the spoken word form.

You'll also find that regional accents are considered more favourable/likeable
than 'the Queens English' so the premise of this may not be 100% correct...

(Brummie is not included in the favourable dialects because it's not
considered nice by anyone in the UK except those in that area.)

~~~
znt
Simple really:

British:
[http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20...](http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20a%20wonderful%20day.&tl=en-
gb)

American:
[http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20...](http://translate.google.com/translate_tts?ie=UTF-8&q=Have%20a%20wonderful%20day.&tl=en-
us)

I know they don't sound ideal, but this is the only distinction I can make via
the resources I have.

~~~
shibby
I don't know anyone who sounds like the 'British' version I also doubt that
that dialect would be preferred.

It would fall under the 'Queens English' or 'received pronunciation', which,
in some studies, is considered less intelligent than Yorkshire dialect -
[http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/apr/04/6](http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2008/apr/04/6)

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The "Have a wonderful" part is not uncommon but the "day" with long drawling
"a" sounds super-strange to me.

------
rdl
I'm a native American English speaker who is also into startups (and has lived
in a lot of places, communicating with non-native speakers in English, as well
as my really horrible Kurdish, Pashto, Dari, French, Arabic, etc. phrases...).
Observations:

1) You should fully Americanize all the spellings. It is American English
people want.

2) This would be far too boring for me to stick with if it is things like "I
went to the cinema yesterday". A coherent story, or even better, a domain-
specific lesson, would be a much more engaging way to teach a language. I was
able to learn when it was "talk to my driver about the security situation and
drive plan", but never cared enough for casual conversation. I am usually
happy to talk to people who speak horrible English about things I care about,
which presumably for the hn audience is tech, startups, etc., but not about
sports (cricket!?). If you could do a vertical-specific sayafter.me it would
be awesome.

~~~
te_chris
Not all people want American English thank you very much. Every time I'm
forced to type 'color' a small part of me dies.

~~~
indefatigable
Wot wot pip pip cheerio get the torch line's engaged eat some crisps there's a
good chap.

~~~
jhome
That's not a mature response. I've look at your other comments and you look
like you've made some worthwhile contribution but this comment is not what I
visit HN daily for.

I agree with te_chris, it is not only arrogant but incorrect to make that
assumption. I don't actually mind using 'color', but you live in a small world
if you think that only a certain accent is relevant.

~~~
indefatigable
Ah well, everybody has their off days.

------
pge
Carnegie Speech is another good product in this area, that as the name
suggests came out of Carnegie Mellon a number of years ago (I have no
affiliation with the company).

~~~
znt
Wow I didn't know about this product. It looks really advanced, would be good
opportunity to see the other players in the market.

I think one advantage I have over this product is, SayAfter.me stores ever
growing stats of word/phrase pronunciation attempts from all users.

Later on it can build custom exercises depending on the background of a
particular user.

I will be able to say "You are Spanish, other Spanish users had the most
trouble with these words. So here is an exercise that contains problematic
English words for native Spanish speakers".

~~~
Caligula
Are you using google speech api? Site looks great!

~~~
znt
Yup, voice records are generated via Google speech API. Voice recognition is
webkit speech input, only supported in Google Chrome. The application itself
uses AngularJS.

This thing wouldn't have been possible without Google really.

------
sdas7
Is there any evidence this actually works? You're motivating your product by
saying it helps you keep your job if you have a thick accent. Does your
product work? How does it compare to competitors? Adding this information
would improve credibility.

~~~
znt
Well the only evidence I have personally seen is the improvement of my wife's
pronunciation.

She doesn't mispronounce the words she practised anymore.

Also I got positive feedback from the early beta users (other students &
English learners) so I assumed it was useful in its initial state.

But yes, I will add additional information with benefits and comparison with
other products.

Thanks!

------
wldlyinaccurate
I couldn't sign up because the email field is limited to 30 characters. Emails
can be up to 256 characters long, sometimes longer.

~~~
znt
Thanks for the report, will fix it ASAP. Apparently this issue is affecting
other Django users as well:

[http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2610088/can-djangos-
auth-...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2610088/can-djangos-auth-user-
username-be-varchar75-how-could-that-be-done)

------
dcraw
Looks interesting. Just a heads up that the video on the home page doesn't
want to load for me. I'm getting a javascript error about the youtube frame
trying to access the sayafter.me frame.

~~~
znt
Thanks for the report, I will look into it.

------
rvivek
Great timing. Haven't tried out the product but on top of this a faster way to
improve could be to just engage in conversations daily with a lot of native
english speakers.

~~~
znt
Good idea, unfortunately not everyone has access to native speakers in their
social circles.

Another nice hack for practising speech is calling free phone support of
various companies/products and tell them about your problem with their
product/service. I learnt this from an Italian guy.

------
nitrogen
I would love something like this that can help me learn other accents of my
own language (English), or other languages (French, perhaps), and evaluate my
performance.

~~~
znt
Adding other languages and American English is on the roadmap, never thought
about other accents of English though.

------
phenom
You can add youtube videos or some short clips from movies and ask your user
repeat after protagonist. Everyone likes to repeat catchy phrases from
movies)))

~~~
znt
Good idea! I was also thinking of adding song lyrics, starting with Queen
maybe.

------
armenarmen
Cool idea! Down the line, it might be in everyone's best interest to have an
American English option as well.

~~~
znt
Thanks! We live in London, so British English was the way to go. If I ever get
to work on this full time, not only I will add American English, but also
Spanish, German, French ASAP.

------
conanbatt
Nice timing :)

Will definitely check this one out.

------
gdonelli
Good marketing, perfect timing!

------
darklajid
I'll give it a try to remove/lessen my German accent.. :-)

Btw: Yes, my email address ends in .de - your registration form seems to think
I mistyped and suggests that I change that to .net. Intentional, even for
valid TLDs?

~~~
znt
I just use the mailcheck plugin with default settings
([https://github.com/Kicksend/mailcheck](https://github.com/Kicksend/mailcheck))

If this keeps happening often maybe I should use my own domain list.

Thanks for the feedback.

~~~
oelmekki
> if this keeps happening often maybe I should use my own domain list.

You probably should do it as soon as possible :

> The included default top level domains are com, net, org, info, edu, gov,
> co.uk, and mil.

Which means ... it excludes all regional non english TLDs. Pretty much a
problem for a service that targets non english native speakers. :)

By the way, I am an english non native speaker that writes a lot of english
through the internet but never ever _speak_ english. This service is just
perfect for me, thank you.

~~~
znt
Alright I just deployed a hotfix that includes TLDs for: com, net, org, de,
fr, in, ru, it, tr.

I will also be adding lots of new content soon, so if you are interested in a
particular theme for words/phrases ("flowers", "dog breeds", "Flirting 101"
etc) just let me know. I will give them higher priority.

~~~
oelmekki
Thanks for that.

I have no special theme right in mind, I usually speak english only when I
travel, so it's mainly general purpose language. This could be as well asking
for menu in restaurant, discussing tech with other developers or debating
politics with foreign friends.

On the other hand, the idea of isolating words that are especially often
wrongly pronounced for a given native language you mentioned in an other
comment sounds really awesome : I'm less interested in getting a specific word
right than getting right specific sounds used in a lot of words (but I guess
this does not help you to select your first words, sorry about that).

~~~
znt
> I'm less interested in getting a specific word right than getting right
> specific sounds used in a lot of words

Actually this is the long term goal. If I ever have the chance to work on
SayAfter.me full time, I will map phonetic sounds to words, and find out which
nationalities have trouble with which sounds.

More info here:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_number#Letters](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_number#Letters)

------
EugeneOZ
It sounds just like some google-translate generated speech. Do you REALLY
think somebody will pay for this service? It's ridiculous.

------
schappim
@znt, just have to say this is a brilliant idea!

------
optymizer
On the nain page of speakafter.me: is 'practise' the right spelling ? ("Not
only will you practise").

~~~
rheide
It is, in fact: [http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammartips/grammar-tip-
prac...](http://www.future-perfect.co.uk/grammartips/grammar-tip-practise-
practice.asp)

------
Keyframe
Great, my accent is already turning british!

------
stevoski
Please: do this for Spanish! I live in Spain, and have a helluva time being
understood when I speak Spanish.

~~~
znt
That's definitely on the roadmap. If you pass me your email, I can notify you
when Spanish version goes live.

------
cabalamat
Is the website broken? When I click on See Video, nothing happens.

------
drnex
nice relevant post. congrats

