Forvo Helps You Speak Like A Native

by Lee Mathews Jul 16th 2008

Learning a foreign language on your own can be frustrating, but it's much easier if you've got a good coach to help you out. Forvo aims to help out by providing a database of words pronounced in various languages by native speakers.

Forvo is still growing, and currently boasts a user base of about 2,700 contributors and 22 editors. Anyone can register and submit new words they'd like to hear pronounced or add their own pronunciations to existing words. The site makes it easy to learn topical words by tagging submissions in groups like fruit, sport, or bad words (for example).

There are currently 186 different languages supported: everything from English, French, Spanish, and Italian to Gaelic, Hawaiian, and Maori. Obviously, some languages are more active than others (read: we want to learn more Maori words!).

Learning a particular language? Subscribe to its RSS feed and get new words to pronounce delivered to your news reader - you can even subscribe to a specific category or speaker if you prefer.

Though it's still in it's early stages, Forvo has the potential to grow into an incredibly useful resource for anyone wanting to learn a language. On the downside, word pages don't include definitions; adding them would increase its usefulness immensely. Still, it's a great project and worth checking out. Sign up, contribute, and help make someone a better speaker!

Tags: language, learning, speaking, translation

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Forvo said 10:52AM on 7-17-2008

It´s nice to be here. Great article by the way, and very up to date: RSS feed for users was introduced... yesterday!

Hope to hear you there ;)

peterahon said 8:01AM on 7-18-2008

thanks for the forvo link and read you again vrom the blog site, it was through this site I came to know about the site and will definitely involve but I hope they can really work it out to make new improvements. Just an email yesterday and two languages were added on my suggestion: Ilokano and Cebuano. Hope to spread the info and will link up your site (excerpt it). Thanks.

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