Pronuncionary: a blog by forvo, the pronunciation dictionary

Forvo Mobile

Forvo — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 14:22:20 +0000

Have you tried to use Forvo from a mobile device? It works pretty fine, but when it comes to listen to pronunciations… oops, you won´t hear anything.

We are introducing some changes to give a better mobile experience. So depending on your device you could listen to pronunciations. Here are the requirements:

- Javascript and Flash Lite enabled browser.

We are not happy with this solution but it´s a first step to bring more compatibility. Feel free to comment your mobile experience in this post.

Complete categories lists

Forvo — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 16:44:10 +0000

Categories or tags are a different way to learn pronunciations in Forvo. We let users add them so they are creating very interesting groups of words, like these categories: Greetings, Opera or France with hundred of words in many languages.

Now we have found that there are more than 12.000 different tags and this classification was semi-hidden to you. That didn´t make sense. So now you can browse the whole categories list and also filtered by language from the language profile page (i.e. japanese and japanese categories).

Hope you like this feature.

Top pronunciations in Dutch

Forvo — Thu, 07 May 2009 21:12:37 +0000

1. Schiphol
2. Dijkstra
3. Godverdomme
4. Gouda
5. Scheveningen
6. Dirk Kuyt
7. Hoegaarden
8. Hieronymus Bosch
9. Utrecht
10. Piet Mondrian

Top pronunciations in Portuguese

Forvo — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 20:16:02 +0000

1. Ronaldinho
2. João
3. Paulo Coelho
4. Rio de Janeiro
5. Paulo Freire
6. Caipirinha
7. Eu te amo
8. Merda
9. Saudade
10. Ronaldo

Word translations in Forvo

Forvo — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 08:55:39 +0000

We have introduced a new lovely feature: translations for each word. Thanks to the Google Translate service, now from every word page you will see that word translated from the original language (more than 50 languages in google´s tool) to the interface language (spanish and english at this moment).

So if translations are not perfect blame Google :)

All Forvo members hope you will enjoy and learn more with this new feature.

Best users by language

Forvo — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 20:13:00 +0000

We have redesigned the language page to help you find who are the best pronouncers in every language. We called these users “The A-team“, so “If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire them. ”

See an example on Russian.

Top pronunciations in Italian

Forvo — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 14:24:02 +0000

1. Ermenegildo Zegna
2. Gnocchi
3. Bvlgari
4. Lamborghini
5. Dolce & Gabbana
6. Versace
7. Moschino
8. Salvatore Ferragamo
9. Caprese
10. Bolognese

Vote for Forvo

Forvo — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 21:20:41 +0000

The spanish bank BBVA is running a contest for innovating projects. We are competing there, well, we are competing in tons of them ;) but this time we are lucky enough to be selected for the voting phase. ~~So, if you want to help Forvo a little more, just place your vote here (no registration required) or using the widget below.~~ Thanks everyone for your votes!

Stereotypical incomprehensibility

Forvo — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 21:20:19 +0000

Have you ever said “it sounds like greek to me“? It´s a common phrase when you don´t understand something. But what does a greek speaker say? and a spanish? There´s sort of a solution in this graph created by language log with many language relations.

Top pronunciations in German

Forvo — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 18:53:14 +0000

This time in German:

1. Gewehr
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger
3. Schadenfreude
4. Friedrich Nietzsche
5. Ich liebe dich!
6. Goethe
7. Porsche
8. Johann Pachelbel
9. Michael Schumacher
10. Beethoven