
YouPronounceIt: Search for a word, get videos of YouTube speakers pronouncing it - caiobegotti
http://youpronounce.it/
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r721
Nobody mentioned Forvo yet?

[http://forvo.com/about/](http://forvo.com/about/)

>Today, Forvo is the largest online reference for pronunciations with a
database of over 3 million words pronounced in 325 languages – all created and
maintained by native speakers.

>Forvo continues to work toward its mission as a go-to reference for authentic
and veritable word pronunciations through over 116 million site visits
annually and over 400,000 registered users.

~~~
iMark
I've not come across Forvo before, but it's UI comes across poorly in
comparison to youpronounceit - a small search box and many steps between type
a word and playing it - whereas the latter has a clear interface, plays the
result quickly and provides context.

Forvo may actually be more useful, but youpronounceit is the one I'll return
to.

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gdrulia
I guess the link provided doesn't represent the page in the best possible way,
[http://forvo.com/](http://forvo.com/) meets you with big input in the middle
of the page, although they don't focus it automatically.

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nautical
I like what you did there ..
[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%27%29%3C%2Fscript%3E%3C...](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%27%29%3C%2Fscript%3E%3Cimg%20src=%27X%27%20%20onerror=%22alert\(document\)%22%3E)

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hellbanner
Humourously related is the Pronunciation Manual:
[https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual](https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual)

~~~
rorosaurus
My first thought was whether they explicitly blacklisted Pronunciation Manual!

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goodside
This is a brilliant research tool, because it can give you fast, unbiased
answers about how English is spoken by real people instead of what's
prescriptively correct. Any English dictionary will tell you that _coup de
grâce_ is pronounced with an /s/ sound at the end, but searching on
YouPronounceIt it's actually very hard to find an English speaker who says it
this way.

~~~
dalke
I agree that it's a useful tool, but I disagree that it's unbiased.

It is biased by the people or algorithms behind the speech-to-text conversion.

For example, if you search for "Yawk" you'll see one match, to a park ranger
kidding someone from "New Yawk". This transcription was done by a human, which
you can tell from how the text does "yeahhh", and how later text is elided or
reworded for clarity. That is, around 0:40 the speaker says ".. unusual rock
outcroppings. I mean they still attract people.." but the text says "..
unusual rock outcroppings that still attract people". Therefore, I think the
transcriptionist used "Yawk" to highlight that the ranger was making a joke
about differences in dialect.

That said, this bias may be low.

I did not know that about coup de grâce. Thanks!

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greggman
I'm not sure what this really does. I mean it's interesting but as far I can
tell it's just searching transcripts or caption data for the word and then
queueing that part of the video. There's no checking if the word is actually
pronounced correctly so you're not actually improving your pronunciation.

Several videos were not just the wrong pronunciation, the captions were wrong
so the person never said the word the system thought was the requested word.

A good example is "candidate" which many people pronounce wrongly as
"cannidate" Checking the results, first one said "cannidate", second one said
something that sounded like "kennedy", 3rd one captions were wrong, 4th one
was "cannidate" as well.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
> pronounced correctly

If a word is so frequently "mispronounced" that you're likely to stumble
frequently stumble upon a "mispronunciation" using this service, then it's not
a mispronunciation at all.

Language is defined by how it is actually used.

Arguably, the fact that this service might give you "mispronunciations" is
actually a point in its favour. This shows you real world examples of how a
word is pronounced.

> A good example is "candidate" which many people pronounce wrongly as
> "cannidate"

Dropping the first /d/ in "candidate" is a common feature of colloquial
American English. It might be proscribed by some, but it's not incorrect.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
>If a word is so frequently "mispronounced" that you're likely to stumble
frequently stumble upon a "mispronunciation" using this service, then it's not
a mispronunciation at all.

Start thinking of "proper" pronunciation being a dialect (specifically,
"Proper English"), and the objection comes back in force.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
There's no such dialect as "proper English". There are some standardised
prestige dialects.

~~~
ThrustVectoring
I think we're in agreement here. If you take a descriptivist version of the
original feature request, it's along the lines of "please do not show me
pronunciations that are from a non-prestigious dialect."

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amelius
A quite humorous google-talk I stumbled upon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=1233](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBpetDxIEMU&t=1233)

~~~
dordoka
It's humorous, but actually quite interesting as well. As a non-native english
speaker I've learnt a lot watching it. Thanks.

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stefap2
This is fun way to discover random videos. I searched "invincible", and you
get array of videos on topics from technology, cancer, health care to solar
panels.

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robbrown451
This is really nice. Although it got the first example I tried wrong in the
first video (I tried "awry", and it came up with one that he actually said "a
riot").

Much more useful than dictionaries that have pronunciation, since you can hear
it in context spoken by real people. If some people pronounce it wrong, that's
ok, because it gives you a feel for how it is actually used.

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dperfect
This could be incredibly useful for video editing - creating one of those
"word collage" clips sometimes used in documentaries.

If you could filter the results by another keyword (within just the video
title for example), you could easily use it to search within the words of a
specific person and create mashup videos a la "Brian Williams rap"[1].

Of course it'd require a little bit of manual trimming of clips, but it'd get
you 99% of the way there - provided the content is on YouTube and captioned.
Maybe there are other cheap/free solutions out there for this kind of thing,
but last I checked, there were a few transcript-searchable video services
targeted at media production companies, and the subscription pricing was
incredibly high if I remember correctly.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CYJ73pVpVc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7CYJ73pVpVc)

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tshadwell
heyoh
[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=i0php8i94%22%3C/script%3...](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=i0php8i94%22%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert\(1\)%3C/script%3E)

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tomchantler
This is a fun idea and it's pretty clever. It would be handy if you could
specify (or be informed about) which accent was used.

Also, the page does a nasty flash when it renders in Chrome.

~~~
Tinyyy
[http://xkcd.com/1425/](http://xkcd.com/1425/)

~~~
tomchantler
Hahah, good point and great link! However, it might be possible also to
include links to pronunciations in US and UK English.

Here is a decent example:
[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/ore...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/oregano)

Having said that, this is not quite what I was expecting:
[http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/alu...](http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/aluminium)

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amatus
It would be nice if you could specify the part of speech also. For example the
verb and noun pronunciations of associate and attribute are different.

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tantalor
[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=quay](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=quay)

First video: American mispronouncing as "kay".

Second video: American mispronouncing as "kway".

Third video: Brit correctly pronouncing as "key".

Otherwise, amazing!

~~~
dragonwriter
Merriam-Webster lists all three of those as accepted pronunciations [0]; like
many things in English, there is significant regional variation.

[0] [http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quay](http://www.merriam-
webster.com/dictionary/quay)

~~~
hugh4
Is the word "Quay" even used in US English?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quay_(disambiguation)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quay_\(disambiguation\))
gives quays all over the UK, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, but
none in the US -- with the exception of a couple of tiny _landlocked_ towns in
Oklahoma and New Mexico called "Quay".

Are we allowed to call a mispronunciation a mispronunciation when it's only
pronounced that way by people who have probably never encountered that word
before?

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amadeusw
This is great! I'm just trying to improve my pronunciation for recording a
podcast and I'm spending a lot of time on dictionary.com. Hearing many people
pronounce a word is great.

@cairo1982 some videos are listed as private, and some start playback at the
very end.

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tyrel
[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngy...](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngyll%C2%ADgogery%C2%ADchwyrn%C2%ADdrobwll%C2%ADllan%C2%ADtysilio%C2%ADgogo%C2%ADgoch)

Bummer!

~~~
_puk
Oh, but it's there!

[https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM](https://youtu.be/fHxO0UdpoxM)

It is however touted as 'an easy and fun way to improve your English'..

Village name marketing gimmicks aside, good tool.

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spikej
You could also grab videos from Pronounciation Book Youtube channel:
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA)

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morinted
This could also help deaf people wanting to learn how to lip-read certain
words -- because you are searching transcripts, you don't have to guess what
the person is saying.

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newsignup
Works for a phrase too, cool.

[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%22what+the+heck%22](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%22what+the+heck%22)

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nanny
[http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=gif](http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=gif)

1) hard g

2) hard g

3) hard g

4) hard g

5) I closed the tab

The concept and implementation are pretty neat, at least.

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melipone
Genial! I've used AT&T text synthetizer before to learn to pronounce certain
phrases and that works well too.

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wodenokoto
This is a great idea, with a great implementation and use of accessible
resources. congratulations to the creators!

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chovietonline
Apparently there were a few minor changes in the search engine and the results
given

