[HN Gopher] Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
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Use YouTube to improve your English pronunciation
Author : vikrum
Score : 229 points
Date : 2023-10-30 19:47 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (youglish.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (youglish.com)
| fallat wrote:
| This is an incredible tool. I would love this for French.
| hmry wrote:
| Well you're in luck, because it supports French too, and dozens
| of other languages. You can click on the "English" with the
| little triangle to change the language
| TontonNestor wrote:
| It does French too. Just click on English and a drop down menu
| appears.
| teach wrote:
| This is really interesting! Instead of "here's how you are
| SUPPOSED to pronounce" any given word or phrase, you show how a
| bunch of native English speakers _actually_ pronounce it.
|
| Maybe everyone is wrong, but if your goal is to be understood
| then you'd be better mimicking what they do than just being
| technically correct. :)
|
| For example, there's a street in the city I live in spelled
| "Guadalupe". Natives pretty much uniformly pronounce it GWAD-uh-
| LOOP.
| narag wrote:
| That's not an English name. It's the name of a spanish river.
| Wad is river in Arabic. They pronounce it correctly. It's
| common that foreign words are adopted and adapted to the host
| language, but sometimes, specially if they're names, the
| original pronounciation lingers.
| camoufleur wrote:
| I think that's their point. I think the proper (Spanish)
| pronunciation is gwah-dah-loo-peh.
| narag wrote:
| Isn't that the same? I mean for a native English speaker.
| Both seem good aproximations (from a native Spanish speaker
| pov).
| renewiltord wrote:
| Loop vs Lu-peh. One has two syllables on the ending and
| the other has one. Surely that sounds noticeable
| different.
|
| Not saying it's right or wrong, but the two are
| different.
| feiss wrote:
| That's the correct pronunciation, yup
| m463 wrote:
| right.
|
| And funny that I once ordered a sandwich in mexico, but
| they couldn't understand me until I pronounced it like san-
| doo-weee-ch
| MeImCounting wrote:
| I did not know it was a river in Spain, coming from the US I
| had always assumed it was some catholic religious phrase or a
| mispronunciation of a native word.
|
| It makes me cringe to imagine people saying "GWAD-uh-LOOP"
| but I guess its not even that bad compared to many
| mispronunciations
| mordechai9000 wrote:
| I think it is not uncommon in the US for place names to
| take on a local pronunciation. It seems to become part of
| the local identity. For instance, Cairo (kay-roh) Illinois.
| The locals know how it is pronounced when referring to the
| city in Egypt, but they will correct you if you pronounce
| the name of their town that way.
| aatd86 wrote:
| There is an island in the French carribean called
| "Guadeloupe" which is pronunced the same. Don't know if these
| are related too.
| bsimpson wrote:
| San Francisco is famously a hodgepodge of Spanish-looking
| names with canonical hybrid pronunciations.
|
| - Divisadero: duh viz uh derro
|
| - Arguello: are goo-ell o
|
| - San Rafael: san ruff ell
|
| - Tomales: tuh mal es
|
| - Gough: gawff (not Spanish, but still surprising)
| inanutshellus wrote:
| aaand that reminds me of "Torpenhow Hill".
|
| > When the Saxons arrived and asked the Welsh the name of
| that hill, the Welsh said "pen" which means "hill" in Welsh.
| So the Saxons used their word for hill, "tor," and called it
| Torpen (hill hill). > > Then the Norse arrived and the same
| process added the their world for hill "Haugr". So now it was
| Torpen Haugr (Hill Hill Hill). > > Later, the English called
| it Torpenhow Hill (Hill Hill Hill Hill)
|
| Turns out the rise near the village of Torpenhow isn't named
| Torpenhow Hill, but I digress... Here's a quick YT on it:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NUyXiiIGDTo
| idoubtit wrote:
| This is a fun hoax that was invented 70 years ago, in 1953.
| It was debunked at least 20 years ago, but it's still more
| popular than facts.
|
| There is a Tarpenhow place in the UK, but it has no hill.
| So _Tarpenhow hill does not exist_. No mention of Norse
| either in the Oxford Concise Dictionary which describes the
| word as "Torr pen", top of the hill, from the Welsh "pen",
| and Old English "hoh", ridge.
| gilleain wrote:
| Yeah I jut looked up some examples from this list
| <https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-49813249>
| starting with 'Frome'.
|
| The first video hit had someone pronouncing it rhyming with
| 'home' when it's meant to be "Froom".
|
| Ok, so it got 'Ballachulish' from a video specifically about
| Scottish Gaelic. (As an aside - how is 'Omagh' difficult?)
| Scarblac wrote:
| > As an aside - how is 'Omagh' difficult?
|
| Same way as every other English word - the spelling seems
| unrelated to the pronunciation.
|
| I've never heard this word. Is the 'gh' part pronounced as in
| though or as in tough?
| messe wrote:
| The gh is silent.
| pja wrote:
| Neither!
| gilleain wrote:
| > English word
|
| Oops! Hah. It's a town in Northern Ireland.
|
| Actually it had not occurred to me that the gh is silent.
| Guess when you know how to say a word it's 'obvious' when
| of course it's not
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Pronounce as follows: say "Oh mah gawd" then elide the
| "gawd".
| GuB-42 wrote:
| That's similar to the technique I sometime use when I hesitate
| between two spellings or expressions. I do a Google search of
| both, the one with the most results wins. There is a website
| called Googlefight that does that for you, but it doesn't seem
| to work anymore.
|
| It may not be correct by the book (though it usually is), but
| it is what people use.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| Language (especially spoken language, _most especially English_
| ) doesn't really have a "right" or "wrong." It has "likely to
| be understood by receiver" and "unlikely to be understood by
| receiver."
|
| The real correct answer to anyone's "what's the right way to
| say...?" question is a probability distribution.
| ozzmotik wrote:
| don't forget the manchaca (now menchaca as it should have been
| the whole time!) being said as "man-CHAK".
|
| that or the one from the other major city, good ol kuykendahl
| aka "kir-KEN-doll"
| Affric wrote:
| I agree with you but nativised nouns are an edge case that you
| likely can never stamp out without a huge amount of context
| that would neuter any usefulness the tool has.
|
| Like any tool for language learning its big limitation is the
| fact that it appears to be writing based.
| m463 wrote:
| that's a perfect example.
|
| reminds me of that "what would a 5th grader say" skit where the
| "which president" answer was something like benjamin
| franklin...
| sltkr wrote:
| _Nucular_. It 's pronounced _nucular_.
| gnicholas wrote:
| Same for Hermosa Beach, Los Gatos, and many other CA towns.
| Even though I speak Spanish, I'm always caught off-guard when
| someone pronounces these places the Spanish way.
| formerly_proven wrote:
| Though some British YouTubers emulate some kind of posh
| enunciation (or what is perceived as such), which is really just
| weird and jarring
| thomasfromcdnjs wrote:
| This is beautiful.
|
| Beyond pronunciation, I want to know how to use words in a
| sentence.
|
| (I play a lot of Scrabble and constantly looking up words I don't
| know to try incorporate them in my daily speech, this will help a
| lot)
| brobinson wrote:
| Wiktionary will go into exhaustive detail (perhaps too much
| detail) about all the use cases of a word, including example
| sentences: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/pronunciation
|
| Works great for Chinese and Japanese, too.
| wahnfrieden wrote:
| So how might they be harvesting YouTube transcripts? I know of
| userscripts that can do it, but anything in the backend I'm not
| sure how they'd do it without ToS issues
| modeless wrote:
| I use Youglish all the time as a native speaker, it's awesome.
| Usually it confirms my suspicion that words I'm unsure of are
| actually pronounced both ways by different people. But
| occasionally I'm surprised.
| blankton wrote:
| A great project. I tried searching for the german word
| "Eichhornchen" and the third pronounciation was in swiss german.
| That is a different language. Use with caution :)
| stratom wrote:
| It even found one occurence of an Austrian slang pronounciation
| of "Eichhornchen": "Oachkatzl"
|
| Though, in the video it is wrongly claimed that
| "Oachkatzlschwoaf" would mean squirrel, but in fact it means
| tail of a squirrel (Eichhornchenschwanz).
| CharlesW wrote:
| Pro tip: Use YouTube to learn the pronunciation of non-English
| words, too!
|
| Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM
|
| Chateauneuf-du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E
|
| Laphroaig: https://youtu.be/UdE20EFNDUs
| hybridtupel wrote:
| This is hurting my ears. There is something similar for German:
| E.g. Zucchini: https://youtu.be/RqPqOTFh-Sc
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| > Hors d'oeuvres: https://youtu.be/o1-ndsRPxbM > > Chateauneuf-
| du-Pape: https://youtu.be/3DSgsON3u8E
|
| Are these jokes? It's not at all the french pronunciation of
| these. As in: it's so wrong a native french speaker won't even
| have a _clue_ what you 're trying to say (it's so off base it's
| totally impossible).
|
| Try to pronounce "pneu" (tire) in french, that's good one:
|
| https://youtu.be/q8aDEF7FH8o
|
| (and that's the real, proper, correct, pronunciation of "pneu"
| in french)
| karaterobot wrote:
| > Are these jokes?
|
| It would seem they are, yes.
| CharlesW wrote:
| Yes, they're jokes. They delighted me so much that I was
| compelled to share them.
| gilleain wrote:
| yes they are not great jokes. 'laphroaigh' is la-frayg i
| guess.
|
| More <https://www.thrillist.com/spirits/scotch/how-to-
| pronounce-sc...>
| johncessna wrote:
| really good idea. I already use youtube for name pronunciation
| and this just hones that search better than hoping youtube's
| search comes through.
| codeTired wrote:
| My shitty polish accent makes me unique though.
| guntherhermann wrote:
| Wow, what a fantastic website. Thank you! It's great that it has
| other languages, as I'm fairly decent in English, but given that
| it's real examplse, and it highlights the text... brilliant
| design choice
| downWidOutaFite wrote:
| If you actually learned using this you might end up with a
| mishmash of British and American pronunciations.
| scraptor wrote:
| Very nice idea and great execution. Sometimes it includes clips
| where the generated subtitles are wrong and the word is actually
| a different one with similar pronunciation (German heiss ->
| heisst for a lot of this). Which brings to mind an interesting
| bias where it leaves out any examples that the AI transcription
| didn't recognise as the word, thus presenting only the
| "canonical" pronunciation according to whatever process trained
| the AI and potentially propagating AI artifacts into the speech
| of actual humans.
| sinkwool wrote:
| Or it could be a typo (as in man-made) My guess is that they
| only use Youtube videos that already have subtitles in the
| target language.
|
| But I'm curious to know how exactly they've built their
| database of videos/transcripts. I wonder if they curate the
| videos manually at all.
| layer8 wrote:
| C# and C++ devolve to just C, unfortunately. And I'm still not
| sure how to pronounce Azure. ;)
| deadbeeves wrote:
| I believe it's supposed to be like "erasure" without the "er".
| jcq3 wrote:
| I guess it leverages LLMs to do semantic search on YouTube audio
| dataset?
| qntty wrote:
| Systems like this predate LLMs. For example this one at UCLA
| https://tvnews.sscnet.ucla.edu/public/. Looks like this one has
| been around for a while https://web.archive.org/web/20230000000
| 000*/https://youglish....
| elicash wrote:
| I found it odd their first two examples were power and courage,
| where the first example ("power") is an American, the second
| speaker ("courage") is British. I'm picturing myself using a tool
| like this with an unfamiliar language where it wouldn't be
| immediately obvious to me, say Spanish in Spain vs Mexico, and
| getting very confused, very quickly.
|
| I like it in concept, though!
| filereaper wrote:
| This is a very interesting site.
|
| I took the name "Regina" as an example as its pronounced _very_
| differently between Canada /UK and US.
|
| If you toggle through the site's region selectors it does indeed
| produce videos with the regionally correct pronouciation.
| (Admittedly I had a sample size of N=1 video each)
|
| So yeah, its a great start!
| alister wrote:
| Another useful site for hearing pronunciations is Forvo:
|
| https://forvo.com/
|
| Those are user contributed pronunciations, so there was an effort
| to say the word clearly. Although Youglish might be more
| authentic in a sense, I prefer hearing a word enunciated
| precisely if I want to learn the pronunciation. And I want to
| hear it in isolation, at least the first time, rather than in the
| middle of long sentence.
| shijie wrote:
| Something I've learned as someone with high proficiency in
| another language that I learned in adulthood (I would never say
| fluent, maybe "functionally" fluent):
|
| Poor pronunciation (I.e. thick accent) but good grammar is
| usually more forgiven by a native than great pronunciation but
| poor grammar. Because then you sound more native, but you sound a
| bit... mentally slow.
|
| I am in the latter camp. My Mandarin Chinese accent is really
| quite good. But I sound like a child.
|
| So my suggestion to all learning a new language: keep a bit of
| your accent and heavily index on correct grammar and vocab and
| listening skills.
| zwieback wrote:
| I agree. I've been speaking (American) English 99% of the time
| for the past thirty years but still have a noticeable German
| accent, never get any flak for that. Apparently Joseph Conrad
| spoke with a heavy Polish accent so that's my excuse.
|
| What's sad is that educated people look down on people speaking
| "grammatically incorrect" even if their way of speaking is
| consistent within their group and conveying meaning perfectly.
| I just call that snobbery.
| init wrote:
| Henry Kissinger has a heavy German accent that didn't prevent
| him from becoming one of the most influential American
| politicians of the 20th century.
| fsckboy wrote:
| Henry Kissinger was also known as a ladies man. Once he was
| in his hotel room with a pretty woman when a world crisis
| broke out that required his attention. However, he was not
| answering the phone, so a desk clerk was sent up to the
| room. He knocked on the door and said "Mr Kissinger, I have
| a message for you". From behind the door he heard, "Go
| avey!" but it was important so he knocked again and said
| "Mr Kissinger, it is urgent that I speak to you!" and again
| "Go avey!" so for the third time he said "It is urgent, are
| you Kissinger!?" and the reply "No! I'm fuckingher! Now go
| avey!"
|
| My gf's mother told me that joke back in the day, with a
| very heavy South American accent, but it still worked,
| maybe a little better because she said "Kissin-gher".
|
| I saw Henry himself just a few years ago, right before
| Covid, in a NYC restaurant. He's extremely old, but he
| seemed very together.
|
| You might call him a "statesman", but he wasn't precisely a
| politician. Also, the post WWII/Cold War era opened the
| door, so to speak, to a large number of displaced
| Europeans, scholars, to give advice about East and Middle
| European issues, advanced science, etc. Zbigniew
| Brzezinski, Werner von Braun also come to mind.
| Barrin92 wrote:
| >but still have a noticeable German accent
|
| my German accent only got less notable after speaking _a ton_
| of English living in English speaking countries for several
| years. For some reason losing the accent was way harder than
| getting rid of an accent in French.
|
| Especially words like 'strength'. If German is your first
| language there is something about 'r' and 'th' sounds that's
| so hard to get right.
| fsckboy wrote:
| a segment of Americans pronounce that word "shtrenkth",
| kinda drives me crazy. Colin Powell did, and my little
| sister does. I have no explanation.
| causality0 wrote:
| Epenthetic stops between nasals and fricatives are
| indicative a native English speaker. StrengKth, warmPth,
| prinTce, etc.
| hyggetrold wrote:
| _> but still have a noticeable German accent, never get any
| flak for that._
|
| My experience of working with Germans in tech is that the
| accent is actually an asset. It's totally playing into a
| certain stereotype of all Germans being great engineers. "I
| mean...he is German...he must be smart!"
| queuebert wrote:
| The problem I've had with Mandarin is keeping my accent means
| imparting tones to the words which could change their meaning.
| But I agree with your general point.
| mkarrmann wrote:
| There's a difference between an accent and incorrect
| pronunciation, and using the wrong tone is the latter.
| yafbum wrote:
| Related things I've learned after moving to US:
|
| - If your accent is not noticable, people will assume you have
| native-like fluency, speak fast and use colloquialisms that you
| may have trouble understanding. Try to work on comprehension at
| least as much as accent.
|
| - Everyone in the English-speaking world has an accent anyways.
| Californians don't speak like Texans, English don't speak like
| Scottish, there are people throughout the former Commonwealth
| that speak a version of English that is what "native" means in
| their country but sounds like acquired language to others.
|
| - When speaking with people who lack fluency in comprehension,
| better to speak their language if you can, even if you struggle
| with it. They will have less trouble detecting your incorrect
| expression. Too often, people who lack fluency in comprehension
| are afraid to say they don't understand.
| bluGill wrote:
| I.can often tell people who a fluent non native speakers
| because I can't figure out where they are from. Different
| areas have different accents and foreign learners end up with
| a very understandable accent that is an average that no
| native speaks.
| gerdesj wrote:
| All countries/languages have multiple accents. My mother was
| from Devon (and the forties!) and could make herself nigh on
| unintelligible to me and my brother and I lived in Plymouth
| (Devon) for eight years.
|
| You are probably familiar with the generic south west of
| England accent - "aarr me hearties" and all that fake pirate
| bollocks. Now listen to the greatest Cockney who ever lived -
| Dick van Dyke - "Cor blimey Mary Poppins. Very different
| accents. If you drift up north, why not take a detour via
| Wales - several accents, quite noticeable when put side by
| side. The midlands has the Black country "yam yam" and
| Brummie, go east and there is a whole host of the bloody
| things. Carry on up and you got "eee bah gum" - Yorkshire and
| more - bear in mind that Yorkshire alone has a larger
| population than each of the other nations of the UK and is
| rather more diverse than even many Yorkies think. Lancs,
| Mancs and Cheshire, oh and don't forget Liverpudlean (find a
| recording of the Beatles speaking - they are from Liverpool).
| Nip on up through Geordie land and Cumbria (Cumbric has only
| recently died out as another Brythonic language). The
| Borders, where England and Scotland blur somewhat and the it
| gets a bit tartan flavoured.
|
| Scotland manages to deploy a lot of accents for roughly 5.5M
| people. Glasgow and Edinburgh are distinguishable for me and
| they are only about 50 miles apart. There's Aberdeeeeeen and
| Perrrrrth and many more!
|
| Over in Ireland (the island) there are several accents. The
| Dublin "brogue" is considered the easiest accent for a
| foreigner to understand, which is quite ironic. The Republic
| of Ireland is home to multiple accents as is Northern Ireland
| (UK).
|
| The accent that D van D deploys in Mary Poppins is generally
| known as "Mockney" and that pirate thing is a variety of
| "Mummerset". Mummer is an old word for actor and Somerset is
| in the south west of England. This comment is getting
| lengthy, so I won't delve into Cockney rhyming slang, which
| is worth looking up if you fancy a right larf, me old septic
| 8)
| smcl wrote:
| Fellow good accent, poor grammar haver (but in Czech) - hello!
| I agree completely. In fact we are not alone, here's a video
| where a YouTuber is praised for his use of English (including
| contemporary idioms etc) in comparison to someone who has a
| good accent but comparatively poor command of the language
| itself: https://youtu.be/-81TSnMUA68?si=4j4mxiSssnQIBVRq
|
| Personally when it comes to speaking English I find a false
| American or English accent quite unnerving.
| bafe wrote:
| That's been my strategy for a long time and indeed it seems to
| pay off more than any of my other friends who have a perfect
| pronunciation but can hardly detect sarcasm or can't write a
| complex text
| praveen9920 wrote:
| I will have to disagree here. I have a South Indian accent and
| a good grip on grammar, at least when I'm speaking, Most of the
| native English speakers I encountered had trouble understanding
| some of the words I was pronouncing even if it was within
| context.
|
| My understanding is that everyone's brain is wired to expect a
| word in a certain way and unless you have encountered other
| accents, the speaker has to repeat what they have been saying.
| rafaelvasco wrote:
| For me it was all about listening to a lot of people talking in
| English, memorizing the exact sounds and pronunciation. And then
| reading books out loud everyday. It helps that I have a very good
| ear, but it should work for anyone.
| lottin wrote:
| Without proper knowledge of English phonetics and dialects,
| this method isn't going to take you very far. For example, in
| English, vowel length carries phonetic information, whereas in
| other languages it does not. If you mother tongue happens to
| fall in the latter category, it's extremely unlikely that
| you'll figure out how vowel length works, or even that you have
| to pay attention to it.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This makes me legit tear-up, it's such a good idea. Best mashup
| of technologies I've seen in a while.
| smokel wrote:
| As a non-native speaker, I was interested in learning the perfect
| British accent. Turns out there is no such thing. There are many
| different accents, but none of them is the default.
|
| "Received pronunciation" [1] probably comes closest, but
| apparently it makes you sound like someone who is a non-native
| speaker and who tried to learn a default accent.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation
| tarkin2 wrote:
| In fact, I find it strange when Germans, for example, have a
| 'perfect British accent'. Even I would say it's perfect.
| Problem is, no one speaks like that... except the Germans. It
| also goes with grammatical accuracy as well. If any German, or
| Nordic etc, says "With whom were you speaking" it marks them as
| a foreigner instantly.
| bafe wrote:
| There's something slightly irritating about German or Dutch
| people trying very hard to have that perfect British accent.
| I can't really tell why, but it always seems affected and
| pretentious. I much prefer the "wooden" (Holzern in German)
| accent of the Swiss
| lynguist wrote:
| It's not grammatical accuracy on their part, it's the
| opposite, it's a calque, a word by word translation from
| their native tongue.
|
| If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their part
| they'd be saying "Who were you talking to" or "Who were you
| speaking to".
|
| Correct is what the people say, not the opinion of literal
| singular English language teachers.
| ninkendo wrote:
| > If it was actually perfect grammatical accuracy on their
| part they'd be saying "Who were you talking to" or "Who
| were you speaking to".
|
| There is a sizable contingent of English speakers out there
| that continue to insist that it's incorrect to end a
| sentence in a preposition. (I am not part of this group and
| it is fortunately shrinking over time.)
| lottin wrote:
| There's no such thing as a 'perfect' accent. Do you mean a
| standard accent?
| pm215 wrote:
| RP itself has changed over time, as the wp article notes -- if
| you tried to speak RP of the 1950s you would definitely come
| across rather strangely today. Some of the arguments over
| naming the article mentions is I think a disagreement over
| whether RP should only refer to that upper class style of
| speech (and thus be a relatively rare accent today) or if it
| should be used as a name for what some people would label
| "Standard Southern British".
| tboughen wrote:
| Yes and no. I used to have a regional accent that was a soft
| mix of Lancashire and Yorkshire accents. I now work in south
| Worcestershire, and the local accent is pretty much modern RP.
| In adulthood, I softened my accent further towards RP to such
| an extent that people think I'm local.
|
| What you are probably referring to is the 'educated European
| twang' that often remains when people are targeting the RP
| accent from 50 years ago.
| ibdf wrote:
| Ha... this works better than I thought it would... maybe I will
| finally be able to pronounce "Squirrel"... but probably not.
| stephen_g wrote:
| Interesting idea. I quite like in terms of the theory behind
| pronunciation Geoff Lindsay's YouTube channel [1]. He does a
| similar thing featuring snippets demonstrating certain ideas -
| I've often wondered how he finds them, perhaps using something
| like this!
|
| 1. https://www.youtube.com/@DrGeoffLindsey/featured
| readams wrote:
| I did a test and entered "saute." It worked, except that the
| first 5 videos were all "Binging with Babish", so it was the same
| person pronouncing the word. Still pretty cool though, and a lot
| better than the SEO spammed "how to pronounce" YouTube videos.
| ahmadnoid wrote:
| As a non native speaker I use this a lot. Not for the
| pronunciation but for actual examples of the word I'm looking
| for.
| soneca wrote:
| I use it from time to time and it is great. It helps that it's
| such an easy to remember domain
| SagatPetchy wrote:
| This will be very helpful to me, as someone who is learning
| several of the supported languages.
|
| One piece of feedback: when I choose Cantonese, all I get is
| Mandarin results. I assume it's because the subtitles of almost
| all Cantonese videos are actually written in standard Chinese
| (with traditional characters).
|
| It would be pretty hard to distinguish between Mandarin and
| Cantonese based on subtitles alone, unless you parse the grammar
| of the sentences or look for Cantonese specific characters.
| ceautery wrote:
| I'd like to see a collection of pronunciation blind-spots, where
| people mispronounce words in the same way. E.g., the extra "ar"
| syllable we put in "narrator", and Ohioans who pronounce
| Bellefontaine as "bell-fountain", as though it had a "u" in it
| somewhere.
| solardev wrote:
| Mmm... I think there's a danger here. The example "coup de
| grace", for example, should be pronounced with the final "s"
| sound. Otherwise it sounds like "coup de gras", ("strike of fat"
| instead of "strike of mercy"). But the YouTube videos
| accidentally leave out the final S. Maybe it's a Britishism? I
| dunno.
|
| Wiktionary calls this a "hyperforeignism", and if you just copy
| the YouTube videos, you'd never know the difference...
|
| https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/coup_de_gr%C3%A2ce
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/ngpq7m/psa...
|
| https://www.dictionary.com/browse/coup%20de%20grace
| benatkin wrote:
| Usually it's for the better. The second most populous country
| that's located in two different continents and doesn't have
| more than 10% of its population on islands should not be called
| Turkey (I said Pavo to because I mistakenly thought it was
| translated like that to Spanish, and meant to emphasize that it
| was called Turkey which also means the bird). I also don't mind
| if I don't hear the word "Cocoa" much anymore (thanks Apple for
| retiring it - this isn't exactly retired but is partly
| superseded by SwiftUI and UIKit).
| solardev wrote:
| > most populous country that's located in two continents
| should not be called Pavo
|
| I don't get this reference :(
|
| > Cocoa
|
| Co-co? Co-co-ah? What's right?
| benatkin wrote:
| (wrong: Turkiye/Turkey used to often be called the spanish
| word for Turkey.) (corrected for second most, as Russia is
| also in two continents, not sure it's correct)
|
| Cacao.
|
| Edit: it appears I was mistaken about Pavo, it was articles
| in Spanish about the official change in English name from
| Turkey to Turkiye. On maps in Spanish I see a lot of other
| countries with spanish names that are quite different like
| Costa de Marfil instead of Ivory Coast and Paises Bajos
| instead of Netherlands.
| seszett wrote:
| > _Russia is also in two continents_
|
| Egypt is too, as well as the US I suppose (to mention
| only countries more populated than Turkey). Their
| population distribution is more unbalanced than Turkey or
| Russia though.
| benatkin wrote:
| Oh, of course :) Though I didn't realize it was more
| populated than Turkiye.
| Underphil wrote:
| Possibly a Britishism, like you say. Personally I've never
| heard the 'S' pronounced here.
|
| "Coo du grar"
|
| Edit : Just remembered this scene from Kill Bill where Michael
| Madsen says it : https://getyarn.io/yarn-
| clip/50fcbf85-e7ca-4d07-8242-adb15db...
| solumos wrote:
| I'd love this for Spanish
| Rendello wrote:
| It has a bunch of languages hidden at the bottom, here's
| Spanish:
|
| https://youglish.com/spanish
| hammock wrote:
| Please dont... "YouTube voice," the narration style(s) that so
| many creators have picked up, is very annoying. It's worse than
| "newscaster voice."
|
| Edit: This is a cool tool though
| queuebert wrote:
| Is that where the speaker randomly pauses between words, as if
| they want to check that you're still watching?
| askiiart wrote:
| My guess is that it refers to the really "hype" voice that a
| lot of YouTubers use. Like Mr. Beast, and most Minecraft
| YouTubers (but usually not ones on Hermitcraft) (source: I've
| had to listen to my little brother watching Minecraft videos
| way too much).
| modeless wrote:
| I find that the videos aren't usually from "creators" but
| academic lectures, interviews, that sort of thing. Maybe it
| depends on the kinds of words you look up, though.
| coolmitch wrote:
| small plug for a similar site, https://filmot.com, which will
| search for a particular word in subtitles
|
| https://filmot.com/search/coup%20de%20gras/1?channelID=&grid...
| (hover a thumbnail to play)
|
| I've personally found it very useful for japanese learning
| crazygringo wrote:
| As a _native_ speaker, YouGlish is invaluable if you have to do
| any audio recording or public speaking and want to make sure you
| pronounce less common names /places correctly. You can't find
| those in dictionaries, and Wikipedia is only sometimes helpful.
|
| It's also super-useful when you want to use words you've only
| ever seen in print, without an obvious pronunciation, and the
| dictionary gives multiple versions without any indication of who
| uses which ones. YouGlish can reveal whether the difference is
| regional, or whether one version is more used by academics or by
| the layperson, etc.
| Rendello wrote:
| It's good too if you're learning another language, as there's
| 20 languages supported at the bottom of the page. I'm
| personally excited by the fact I can search for Canadian French
| specifically
| spandextwins wrote:
| Speak slowly and take your time. Grammar is important. Accents
| are acceptable.
| kebsup wrote:
| What I've found interesting about learning pronunciation is how
| deliberate you can be about fixing it. A lot of people from
| Slavic countries tend to pronounce the "th" sound as "d" or "s",
| including me, but I've stopped doing that mistake literally right
| after an American pointed out that I do it.
| williamdclt wrote:
| And then hypercorrection happens, and you start saying "th"
| when it _was_ an "s"!
| deadbeeves wrote:
| Such as in?
| chrisandchips wrote:
| its cool that it still works across all locales (US, UK) for
| words spelt differently between countries.
|
| E.G. searching "aluminum" still got both US and UK results, even
| though the later writes it "aluminium".
| lfkdev wrote:
| I really do like this. Cool Idea!
| hiccuphippo wrote:
| Neat. I usually use wordreference.com, but forvo.com has many
| more accents and some phrases.
|
| Just today I noticed how different the US and British
| pronunciations of Lieutenant are. The British one has an f sound
| in it, somehow.
|
| https://forvo.com/search/lieutenant/
| m463 wrote:
| as a native english speaker, this helps with words like
| Schenectady too.
| aimon1 wrote:
| This is very helpful
| torcete wrote:
| I will finally learn how to pronounce "prioritisation".
| CliffStoll wrote:
| Fifty-five year old true story: I was dating a woman in Buffalo;
| we're both native speakers. She tells me to meet her at a place
| on "Gothee" Street, over in the Lovejoy district.
|
| I bike over to the east side of town, and search all over for
| Gothee Street. No luck. Ask a few locals - nada. Spend a half
| hour looking; eventually give up.
|
| Next morning, there's hell to pay. She waited an hour for me.
|
| What happened? "It's Goethe Street, stupid," she says" "G O E T H
| E"
|
| I had no idea of this super-local pronunciation -- I'd always
| pronounced the poet's name as "G uh - t uh"
|
| (Similar thing happened in a town near Rochester, New York: How
| do you pronounce Chili, NY ? You'd better say "Chy - Ly" unless
| you want to sound like a stranger.)
| avgcorrection wrote:
| But why would I want to sound like a native?
|
| - English accent: monocle vibes
|
| - Australian accent: Crocodile Dundee (badass but I can't embody
| that)
|
| - Standard American accent: incredible "twang" (sounds like all
| wovels are sent through a wah-wah pedal)
| Minor49er wrote:
| Just for fun, I looked at how 20 different people pronounced
| MySQL. The results: "My Sequel": 12 "My Ess
| Kyoo El": 8 "My Squirrel": 0
|
| I thought "My Sequel" would have something closer to 2/3rds of
| results rather than 1/2
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I'm surprised it's the majority at all. It's so weird that
| people insert imaginary vowels to try to pronounce it as if it
| were a word.
| crazygringo wrote:
| You save a syllable, but also the letters SQL are on the
| unpleasant side of pronunciation. Just like the word "askew"
| -- it's just not a nice mouthfeel with that particular
| sequence of sounds.
| ufo wrote:
| History plays a role here. It used to be called SEQUEL before
| it was renamed to SQL.
| jcparkyn wrote:
| I think there are two main reasons:
|
| - Early versions of SQL were actually called SEQUEL
| (Structured English QUEry Language). - Sequel is just much
| easier to say than SQL, especially within a sentence.
| jcparkyn wrote:
| To be fair, 12/20 _is_ closer to 2/3 than 1/2.
| anadalakra wrote:
| As a non-native English speaker, the "randomness" of English
| pronunciation has been a source of frustration for me for many
| years.
|
| I realized there are two types of issues: 1. Some sounds in
| English don't exist in other languages and you have to learn them
| "from scratch". For example the "flap T" in butter. Or the
| particular American "r" (constrast it to the Spanish rolled r for
| instance). 2. Certain sounds I DID know how to make, but didn't
| know WHEN to make them because spelling is so unreliable. For
| example, a word like "color" has to "o" letters but neither of
| them makes an "ou" sound - in fact they make two distinct sounds.
| For these, I realized you just have to practice it until your
| mouth "remembers" how to pronounce the word differently (i.e.
| creates muscle memory).
|
| Youglish is great for fine-tuning specific words.
|
| I also recommend BoldVoice (disclaimer: I'm a cofounder). We were
| YC S21 and built the app to help non-native English speakers
| improve their pronunciation with videos from Hollywood speech
| coaches and instant feedback via speech recognition ML.
| modeless wrote:
| BoldVoice looks cool, are you planning other languages?
| Personally I'm learning Mandarin.
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| Software Engineer at Boldvoice here, also learning Mandarin.
| I've been told my Chinese accent is awful due in large part
| to misuse of tones and overemphasizing articles like Liao .
| We'd love to build something for all languages but are
| focusing on just users learning english right now.
| anadalakra wrote:
| Thanks! For now, we're laser-focused on English since it's
| the language that 1 billion people are learning (as non-
| native speakers). But we'd love to add more languages in the
| future, stay tuned!
| David_Axelrod wrote:
| Youglish is a great tool and we often hear users reference using
| it. It's nice to have so many examples available for a given
| piece of text.
|
| What I think makes BoldVoice significantly better is the ability
| to get feedback on your specific utterances and have the app
| highlight what elements of a word might make it harder for a
| native English speaker to understand you. If you go the route of
| only using youtube/references, you're left in this gradient
| descent process where you're just guessing mouth movements until
| you get something that sounds like the reference.
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