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Wow, this seemed to work very well for all the words I typed in. I would love to try something like this for German, as it can be hard to pronounce those massi

Wow, this seemed to work very well for all the words I typed in. I would love to try something like this for German, as it can be hard to pronounce those massive compound words they have. The one criticism that I have is that many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. During speeches people will inflect words differently than in everyday conversation, especially politicians. I got one Theresa May speech and the rest were Americans.

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago
If German listening and speaking practice is what you want, give this a try: https://eardoor.com https://eardoor.com it's got spaced repetition practice, plus lots of listening material and no sign up required. its free, and there's no annoying app to download.
- schemathings 7y ago
  Someone mentioned this in the past few months .. looks useful but I wish there were keyboard shortcuts ..
- yorwba 7y ago
  That site appears to violate the attribution requirements for the recordings they're using. https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org is mentioned in the attribution section, but the individual contributor of each audio file is not identified. If you don't care about the extra features, you could also just use Tatoeba's own search functionality: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/search?query=&from=deu&to=eng&orphans=no&unapproved=no&user=&tags=&list=&has_audio=&trans_filter=limit&trans_to=und&trans_link=&trans_user=&trans_orphan=&trans_unapproved=&trans_has_audio=yes&sort=words https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/search?query=&from=deu&to=... Also works for languages other than German. ( https://tatoeba.org/eng/stats/sentences_by_language https://tatoeba.org/eng/stats/sentences_by_language )
- avinium 7y ago
  "This site has been suspended for copyright violations." I assume this happened in the last 8 hours or so..
  - yorwba 7y ago
    I sent the owner an email asking for attribution to be added. I guess suspending the site is the correct action to take in response to a DMCA complaint, although I'm not sure my email qualifies as one. (It's not infringing my copyright after all.) It appears to have been a useful service for quite a few people, so I hope he puts it back up with the appropriate attribution.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Baeocystin 7y ago
German is one of the languages available in the dropdown menu. I just gave it a cursory try, but it seems to work well.
- jalgos_eminator 7y ago
  Cool! I didn't notice the dropdown menu the first time. I will definitely be using this, thanks!
lone_haxx0r 7y ago
> many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. I think that's a plus, but it depends on your needs.
- karaokeyoga 7y ago
  Also televangelists. They have an unusual way of enunciating. Reminds me of a road trip with my father through the US. He was listening to an evangelist on the radio and I asked him why. (He's an athiest.) He answered along the lines of "just listen to the beauty of that voice!". He felt the same way about Gospel music. Left an impression.
  - philwelch 7y ago
    Long car trips are weird and lonely enough that you can listen to anyone speaking out loud and you just feel a little less lonely no matter what. I think this was the premise of Art Bell's entire career.
suyash 7y ago
lol I tried the same :) It is totally ignorant of the context which makes it funny.
SilasX 7y ago
Seconded. I still can't tell apart the first a's in Ratte vs Rathaus, and Germans assure me they're different and the difference breaks any attempts to make puns based on the two (Rathaus=city hall, but to my ear feels like Ratte-house/haus).
- andrevoget 7y ago
  As a German I can assure you that both "a" in Ratte and Rathaus sound the same. The "a" in Rathaus is just spoken a bit longer and the following "t" is hardly pronounced, whereas the "a" in Ratte is spoken very short and the "t" is pronounced strongly. I hope that helps.
  - SilasX 7y ago
    So ... can you accept "Ratten raus vom Rathaus" as a pun? Like, I can understand if it's too low-effort or obvious, but is it still a pun?
    - grumdan 7y ago
      The two vowel lengths sound too different to me (native speaker) for this to really work. The difference is the difference between aː vs a in IPA. I'm struggling to find a similar vowel length example in English and Wikipedia only has examples with an Australian accent. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel...
      - mikekchar 7y ago
        Yeah, it doesn't really exist in English. I'd even argue that the Australian pronunciation doesn't change the vowel length as much as it adds a chain shift [1] (similar to the Canadian/Algonquin "ou" pronunciation). It's one of the most difficult things to pick up when learning Japanese as well. There are lots of words that are basically homophones except for vowel length and tone. To an English speaker they tend to sound identical, but to a Japanese speaker if you get it wrong the result is unintelligible. For example "地図" (in romaji: chizu and pronounce cheezu with a short "ee") is "map" and "チーズ" (in romaji: chiizu and pronounced cheezu with a long "ee") is "cheese" (though they have the same tones... I'm struggling to think of an example with different tones as well as vowel length). The thing that helped me the most for this was singing songs. Once you understand that there is a necessary rhythm to the words, it makes it much easier to use that rhythm in speaking. Or at least it did for me -- YMMV. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shift
godelski 7y ago
Not me. Rural was particularly bad and is a terribly difficult word for non-indo-european speakers. The video (I found this in a few words) starts RIGHT on the word (autocracy did this as well). Most of the time this doesn't happen though. I did wish it would default to a specific pronunciation too. Default to US or UK when selecting "All". Router I got UK, Aluminum I got US. Epoch I got (it says US) some weird bastardization of US and UK[0] (though with ML becoming really popular it seems that everyone is defaulting to the UK pronunciation - probably because the spelling - so maybe this should default to UK?). There also seems to be a bias for Ted Talks. I definitely agree with the parent's point about how speeches are different. But I'm not sure that's necessarily bad. The intonation changes people make when in speeches/talks is one of over pronunciation rather than the under pronunciation that we do in everyday speak. This may be better for learning. Maybe both could exist though. A "proper" and "casual" one. I'd say the casual should bias towards things like videoblogers and probably twitch streamers would be a good/plentiful resource. Might want to filter some of the latter though (stick to good streamers and big things like GDQ). Sports events would also be a good one. That being said I'm not trying to discourage this effort and honestly I really like it (and wish there was one for Chinese, is there?). English isn't easy and there are a lot of pronunciations (I picked out words that are edge cases). I have already recommended it to a friend. Good job! Edit: Friend (native Chinese) already knew about this (extra good job!) [0] How it should sound https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epoch https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epoch (You can now tell all your ML friends that they are saying it wrong and win that great sense of superiority. Never mind that language is what is spoken, the dictionary is always right!) video it linked: https://youglish.com/getcid/19634402/epoch https://youglish.com/getcid/19634402/epoch
- dorkwood 7y ago
  I think you got US for “aluminum” because the US is the only country that spells it that way.
  - godelski 7y ago
    That's a fair point (force of habit). But I did get UK when I clicked UK. Interestingly when I put in "colour" or "favouritie" I get different videos than the respective pronunciations for "color" and "favorite"
interfixus 7y ago
My German really isn't up to scratch, but orthograpically/phonetically it is by far the most straightforward and consistent language that I know of. Those compound words may take some time to pick apart, but once you've done, their pronunciation is generally unambiguous.
elil17 7y ago
They have a German version - click on “in English” to get a drop down list of other languages

thorwasdfasdf 7y ago

If German listening and speaking practice is what you want, give this a try: https://eardoor.com https://eardoor.com it's got spaced repetition practice, plus lots of listening material and no sign up required. its free, and there's no annoying app to download.

schemathings 7y ago
Someone mentioned this in the past few months .. looks useful but I wish there were keyboard shortcuts ..
yorwba 7y ago
That site appears to violate the attribution requirements for the recordings they're using. https://tatoeba.org https://tatoeba.org is mentioned in the attribution section, but the individual contributor of each audio file is not identified. If you don't care about the extra features, you could also just use Tatoeba's own search functionality: https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/search?query=&from=deu&to=eng&orphans=no&unapproved=no&user=&tags=&list=&has_audio=&trans_filter=limit&trans_to=und&trans_link=&trans_user=&trans_orphan=&trans_unapproved=&trans_has_audio=yes&sort=words https://tatoeba.org/eng/sentences/search?query=&from=deu&to=... Also works for languages other than German. ( https://tatoeba.org/eng/stats/sentences_by_language https://tatoeba.org/eng/stats/sentences_by_language )
avinium 7y ago
"This site has been suspended for copyright violations." I assume this happened in the last 8 hours or so..
- yorwba 7y ago
  I sent the owner an email asking for attribution to be added. I guess suspending the site is the correct action to take in response to a DMCA complaint, although I'm not sure my email qualifies as one. (It's not infringing my copyright after all.) It appears to have been a useful service for quite a few people, so I hope he puts it back up with the appropriate attribution.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Baeocystin 7y ago

German is one of the languages available in the dropdown menu. I just gave it a cursory try, but it seems to work well.

jalgos_eminator 7y ago
Cool! I didn't notice the dropdown menu the first time. I will definitely be using this, thanks!

lone_haxx0r 7y ago

> many of these videos are from ted talks or speeches by politicians. I think that's a plus, but it depends on your needs.

karaokeyoga 7y ago
Also televangelists. They have an unusual way of enunciating. Reminds me of a road trip with my father through the US. He was listening to an evangelist on the radio and I asked him why. (He's an athiest.) He answered along the lines of "just listen to the beauty of that voice!". He felt the same way about Gospel music. Left an impression.
- philwelch 7y ago
  Long car trips are weird and lonely enough that you can listen to anyone speaking out loud and you just feel a little less lonely no matter what. I think this was the premise of Art Bell's entire career.

suyash 7y ago

lol I tried the same :) It is totally ignorant of the context which makes it funny.

SilasX 7y ago

Seconded. I still can't tell apart the first a's in Ratte vs Rathaus, and Germans assure me they're different and the difference breaks any attempts to make puns based on the two (Rathaus=city hall, but to my ear feels like Ratte-house/haus).

andrevoget 7y ago
As a German I can assure you that both "a" in Ratte and Rathaus sound the same. The "a" in Rathaus is just spoken a bit longer and the following "t" is hardly pronounced, whereas the "a" in Ratte is spoken very short and the "t" is pronounced strongly. I hope that helps.
- SilasX 7y ago
  So ... can you accept "Ratten raus vom Rathaus" as a pun? Like, I can understand if it's too low-effort or obvious, but is it still a pun?
  - grumdan 7y ago
    The two vowel lengths sound too different to me (native speaker) for this to really work. The difference is the difference between aː vs a in IPA. I'm struggling to find a similar vowel length example in English and Wikipedia only has examples with an Australian accent. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel_length https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel_length#Contrastive_vowel...
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      Yeah, it doesn't really exist in English. I'd even argue that the Australian pronunciation doesn't change the vowel length as much as it adds a chain shift [1] (similar to the Canadian/Algonquin "ou" pronunciation). It's one of the most difficult things to pick up when learning Japanese as well. There are lots of words that are basically homophones except for vowel length and tone. To an English speaker they tend to sound identical, but to a Japanese speaker if you get it wrong the result is unintelligible. For example "地図" (in romaji: chizu and pronounce cheezu with a short "ee") is "map" and "チーズ" (in romaji: chiizu and pronounced cheezu with a long "ee") is "cheese" (though they have the same tones... I'm struggling to think of an example with different tones as well as vowel length). The thing that helped me the most for this was singing songs. Once you understand that there is a necessary rhythm to the words, it makes it much easier to use that rhythm in speaking. Or at least it did for me -- YMMV. [1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_shift

godelski 7y ago

Not me. Rural was particularly bad and is a terribly difficult word for non-indo-european speakers. The video (I found this in a few words) starts RIGHT on the word (autocracy did this as well). Most of the time this doesn't happen though. I did wish it would default to a specific pronunciation too. Default to US or UK when selecting "All". Router I got UK, Aluminum I got US. Epoch I got (it says US) some weird bastardization of US and UK[0] (though with ML becoming really popular it seems that everyone is defaulting to the UK pronunciation - probably because the spelling - so maybe this should default to UK?). There also seems to be a bias for Ted Talks. I definitely agree with the parent's point about how speeches are different. But I'm not sure that's necessarily bad. The intonation changes people make when in speeches/talks is one of over pronunciation rather than the under pronunciation that we do in everyday speak. This may be better for learning. Maybe both could exist though. A "proper" and "casual" one. I'd say the casual should bias towards things like videoblogers and probably twitch streamers would be a good/plentiful resource. Might want to filter some of the latter though (stick to good streamers and big things like GDQ). Sports events would also be a good one. That being said I'm not trying to discourage this effort and honestly I really like it (and wish there was one for Chinese, is there?). English isn't easy and there are a lot of pronunciations (I picked out words that are edge cases). I have already recommended it to a friend. Good job! Edit: Friend (native Chinese) already knew about this (extra good job!) [0] How it should sound https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epoch https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/epoch (You can now tell all your ML friends that they are saying it wrong and win that great sense of superiority. Never mind that language is what is spoken, the dictionary is always right!) video it linked: https://youglish.com/getcid/19634402/epoch https://youglish.com/getcid/19634402/epoch

dorkwood 7y ago
I think you got US for “aluminum” because the US is the only country that spells it that way.
- godelski 7y ago
  That's a fair point (force of habit). But I did get UK when I clicked UK. Interestingly when I put in "colour" or "favouritie" I get different videos than the respective pronunciations for "color" and "favorite"

interfixus 7y ago

My German really isn't up to scratch, but orthograpically/phonetically it is by far the most straightforward and consistent language that I know of. Those compound words may take some time to pick apart, but once you've done, their pronunciation is generally unambiguous.

elil17 7y ago

They have a German version - click on “in English” to get a drop down list of other languages