8 ms·

YouPronounceIt: Search for a word, get videos of YouTube speakers pronouncing it

141 points by caiobegotti 11y ago

tomchantler 11y ago
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 11y ago
  http://xkcd.com/1425/ http://xkcd.com/1425/
  - tomchantler 11y ago
    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/oregano http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/ore... Having said that, this is not quite what I was expecting: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/aluminium http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/alu...
tantalor 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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 11y ago
    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?
- TomSawyer 11y ago
  Care to map the phonics path from quay to "key"? "kway" seems like the most reasonable pronunciation unless the letters are just meant to be strokes in a pictogram.
  - minority-one 11y ago
    That's because what tantalor left out is that anglophones started misspelling that word in the 17th century, when it was actually spelled "key" from old French "kay". So it's not so much a word that you go "ah I'm so clever I can pronounce it right", but more one that you go "some people along the way started misspelling this too often and the people who knew better didn't do a good job in correcting them". And why should I know how to pronounce a word that current anglophones don't know how to spell? It's a tongue-in-cheek question, people.
- vertis 11y ago
  http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=niche http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=niche is also a bit like that.
newsignup 11y ago
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
spikej 11y ago
You could also grab videos from Pronounciation Book Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA
goodside 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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!
stefap2 11y ago
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.
tyrel 11y ago
http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngyll%C2%ADgogery%C2%ADchwyrn%C2%ADdrobwll%C2%ADllan%C2%ADtysilio%C2%ADgogo%C2%ADgoch http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngy... Bummer!
- _puk 11y ago
  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.
hellbanner 11y ago
Humourously related is the Pronunciation Manual: https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual
- rorosaurus 11y ago
  My first thought was whether they explicitly blacklisted Pronunciation Manual!
- kevincox 11y ago
  These videos don't actually have (fake) captions so they shouldn't pop up (for the words in the title).
amatus 11y ago
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.
melipone 11y ago
Genial! I've used AT&T text synthetizer before to learn to pronounce certain phrases and that works well too.
amelius 11y ago
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 11y ago
  It's humorous, but actually quite interesting as well. As a non-native english speaker I've learnt a lot watching it. Thanks.
r721 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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.
  - gdrulia 11y ago
    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.
greggman 11y ago
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 11y ago
  > 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 11y ago
    >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 11y ago
      There's no such dialect as "proper English". There are some standardised prestige dialects.
dperfect 11y ago
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
amadeusw 11y ago
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.
robbrown451 11y ago
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.
tshadwell 11y ago
heyoh http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=i0php8i94%22%3C/script%3E%3Cscript%3Ealert(1)%3C/script%3E http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=i0php8i94%22%3C/script%3...
nanny 11y ago
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.
wodenokoto 11y ago
This is a great idea, with a great implementation and use of accessible resources. congratulations to the creators!
nautical 11y ago
I like what you did there .. http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%27%29%3C%2Fscript%3E%3Cimg%20src=%27X%27%20%20onerror=%22alert(document)%22%3E http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=%27%29%3C%2Fscript%3E%3C...
chovietonline 11y ago
Apparently there were a few minor changes in the search engine and the results given
morinted 11y ago
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.

141 points by caiobegotti 11y ago

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 11y ago
http://xkcd.com/1425/ http://xkcd.com/1425/
- tomchantler 11y ago
  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/oregano http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/ore... Having said that, this is not quite what I was expecting: http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/aluminium http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/pronunciation/english/alu...

tantalor 11y ago

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 11y ago
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 11y ago
  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?
TomSawyer 11y ago
Care to map the phonics path from quay to "key"? "kway" seems like the most reasonable pronunciation unless the letters are just meant to be strokes in a pictogram.
- minority-one 11y ago
  That's because what tantalor left out is that anglophones started misspelling that word in the 17th century, when it was actually spelled "key" from old French "kay". So it's not so much a word that you go "ah I'm so clever I can pronounce it right", but more one that you go "some people along the way started misspelling this too often and the people who knew better didn't do a good job in correcting them". And why should I know how to pronounce a word that current anglophones don't know how to spell? It's a tongue-in-cheek question, people.
vertis 11y ago
http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=niche http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=niche is also a bit like that.

newsignup 11y ago

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

spikej 11y ago

You could also grab videos from Pronounciation Book Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9uWfM5hvVlAPzl7KMlSvA

goodside 11y ago

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 11y ago
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!

stefap2 11y ago

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.

tyrel 11y ago

http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngyll%C2%ADgogery%C2%ADchwyrn%C2%ADdrobwll%C2%ADllan%C2%ADtysilio%C2%ADgogo%C2%ADgoch http://youpronounce.it/search.jsp?q=Llanfair%C2%ADpwllgwyngy... Bummer!

_puk 11y ago
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.

hellbanner 11y ago

Humourously related is the Pronunciation Manual: https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual https://www.youtube.com/user/PronunciationManual

rorosaurus 11y ago
My first thought was whether they explicitly blacklisted Pronunciation Manual!
kevincox 11y ago
These videos don't actually have (fake) captions so they shouldn't pop up (for the words in the title).

amatus 11y ago

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.

melipone 11y ago

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

amelius 11y ago

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 11y ago
It's humorous, but actually quite interesting as well. As a non-native english speaker I've learnt a lot watching it. Thanks.

r721 11y ago

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 11y ago
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.
- gdrulia 11y ago
  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.

greggman 11y ago

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 11y ago
> 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 11y ago
  >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 11y ago
    There's no such dialect as "proper English". There are some standardised prestige dialects.

dperfect 11y ago

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

amadeusw 11y ago

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.

robbrown451 11y ago

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.

tshadwell 11y ago

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

nanny 11y ago

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.

wodenokoto 11y ago

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

nautical 11y ago

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

chovietonline 11y ago

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

morinted 11y ago

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.