Chrome feature: How to Pronounce English Words

[cyberdiva]

Martin Brinkmann has a piece on ghacks.net today about an extension in the Chrome browser called "How Do You Say" that will pronounce English words, phrases, and even sentences that you either add manually or highlight on a web page.  As far as I can tell, the feature is available only for English.  Brinkmann was moderately enthusiastic about it, though it's limited to just the words it has in its database.  Still, since Donation Coder has a large international membership, I thought this might possibly be of interest.  You can find the article at http://www.ghacks.net/2012/01/06/learn-how-to-pronaunce-english-words/ (and yes, pronounce is misspelled in the URL    ). I don't use Chrome, so I wasn't able to try it out.  I might add that I first did a search of the forum to see if this has already been mentioned.  I searched on pronounce English words and received no hits, but the forum search software did provide the following feedback:

Adjust Search Parameters
You may have meant to search for pronounce Englisher words.
 

[Renegade]

Interesting. It pronounced "Floccinaucinihilipilification" pretty well. I'd keep the "nihili" with short i's where it had long i's, but hey, it works!

For "Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious" it was bang on!

It butchered "pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis", but it was recognizable. The stresses there were pretty bizarre.

It got "jujube" right. (The final "e" isn't pronounced, which is a mistake that many English speakers make. i.e. jew-jew-bee is wrong.)

No results at all for "frack", however it got "fracking" right.

It had long o's for the first o's in "otorhinolaryngologist" where I'd use short o's. (I think that's a Canadian vs. British pronunciation issue.)

It could use an autofocus on it though as it's a pain to click in the box. Still, it's very well done.

[daddydave]

Interesting. Try highlighting "tune" and "and" and it will give you three different pronunciations for each, but it is still the one guy's voice (didn't sound robotic to me, just seemed like a slight British accent (to an American)). The volume oscillated up and down when I highlighted several words at a time.

--

I prefer forvo's approach, you can get a human to pronounce it for you, add your own words, record pronunciations yourself using a builtin Flash applet, and hear native speakers from several different countries or regions. Plus it's not English only. You can also use your favorite browser search addons to look up highlighted text in Forvo just like any search engine. I have no affilation with them other than being a user (yes, I am kind of derelict in my pronouncing duties, I have only pronounced one word there so far).



And if anyone knows Punjabi, go here and pronounce ainvayi for me, thanks.  

[eleman]

Pronounce is a firefox add-on for the same purpose. If you're like me, effectively locked into firefox thanks to the extensive and currently unmatched add-on set, despite all the memory leaks and sometimes slow performance, this would do the job for you.

How I wish Opera had one third of the extension park of Firefox...

[Curt]

Pronounce is a firefox add-on for the same purpose.

-eleman (January 07, 2012, 02:26 AM)

Thank you!  

Works with Firefox 8.01

Edited:
I can see on the Mozilla page that some people never figured out to first add the necessary button to their toolbar, and therefore assumed the add-on doesn't work. But it does.

[cyberdiva]

Curt, I went to the Mozilla page to see whether Pronounce works with languages other than English.  It doesn't, but I was astonished to see in prominent red letters a statement on the page (i.e., not just in the comments) that it doesn't work with FF 8.0.1.  Since you've obviously gotten it to work with that version (and fortunately have added a comment to say so), why would Mozilla put such a wrong-headed comment on the page?  If I were the developer, I'd be furious.

[Curt]

-they really just should say "have not yet been officially tested with Firefox 8.01". However, on my version of the page they are saying, "May be incompatible with Firefox 8.0.1", which I think is similar. "Red letters"; is your version of the page different?

[cyberdiva]

-they really just should say "have not yet been officially tested with Firefox 8.01". However, on my version of the page they are saying, "May be incompatible with Firefox 8.0.1", which I think is similar. "Red letters"; is your version of the page different?

-Curt (January 07, 2012, 11:04 AM)

Yes, it is.  The statement is in red and it says "Not available for Firefox 8.0.1."  I'm trying to include an attachment, but I'm not sure whether it has worked, since the preview doesn't show it.  [Well, apparently it worked, though I would have preferred it AFTER the message's text.]

[Curt]

-the difference may have been be caused by my Mr Tech Toolkit add-on:

direct link! http://mrte.ch/toolkit Mr Tech Toolkit 6.0.4.9000 xpi add-on for Firefox 8.01

-direct link for Mr Tech Toolkit xpi addon

But as I remember it, you want to use Opera? I've found nothing except an extension for Twitter only.

[cyberdiva]

-the difference may have been be caused by my Mr Tech Toolkit add-on:

direct link! http://mrte.ch/toolkit  for Firefox 8.01

-direct link for xpi addon

But as I remember it, you want to use Opera? I've found nothing except an extension for Twitter only.

-Curt (January 07, 2012, 03:19 PM)

I'm not sure I follow you about Mr. Tech Toolkit.  It seems to show something in red ("direct link") in the graphic you posted, but I'm the one who had in red the statement about Pronounce not being available for FF 8.0.1.

Also, although I do use both Opera and Firefox, FF is my default browser.  I wasn't concerned about whether Pronounce was available for Opera--I went to the Mozilla page to see whether Pronounce also deals with languages other than English.  I found it doesn't, and I was no longer interested for myself.  I posted the message for the possible benefit of other people on the DC forum.

[daddydave]

I'm not sure I follow you about Mr. Tech Toolkit.  It seems to show something in red ("direct link") in the graphic you posted, but I'm the one who had in red the statement about Pronounce not being available for FF 8.0.1.

-cyberdiva (January 07, 2012, 04:08 PM)

One of the side effects of Firefox's rapid increase in version numbers is that there are a lot of addons where the developer has not had a chance to update version compatibility information, thus shifting this burden to the user. I think Curt is right that the Mr Tech Toolkit addon is allowing him to install it anyway even if Mozilla thinks it is not compatible. I use a different addon with a similar function. The addon changes what you see on the Mozilla addon web site to allow installing it.

[Curt]

Sorry that my previous post was so unclear in meaning. Yes, I meant what daddydave also said, Mr Tech Toolkit is replacing "Not available..." with "May be incompatible...", because everything is available when you have Mr Tech Toolkit installed, but it may not be compatible...

[zridling]

Wow, thanks guys, these are great!

[cyberdiva]

Many thanks, daddydave and Curt, for the clarification.

[Curt]

Curt, I went to the Mozilla page to see whether Pronounce works with languages other than English. (...) Since you've obviously gotten it to work with that version (and fortunately have added a comment to say so), (...)

-cyberdiva (January 07, 2012, 08:56 AM)

I am glad that someone saw the comment, because now it has gone!
WHY?!!  


----------------
by the way: INFO about Mr Tech Toolkit:

MR Tech Toolkit 6.0.4
by mrtech

(Formerly Local Install) The primary goal of this extension is to provide the tools needed to install and manage extensions and themes locally and tons of other features.

Note: With Toolkit 6.0 Auto Archiving is fully working in Firefox 2.0 and temporarily disabled for Firefox 3.0, fix coming soon.

The promised fix didn't come "soon", because the author abandoned his add-on!
Anyway, I am now using Mr Tech Toolkit on Firefox 9, so no problemos!
 
-but of course, the version I am using is not the one from Mozillas page but the linked re-written version from my earlier post:

direct link for Mr Tech Toolkit xpi addon
direct link!: http://mrte.ch/toolkit Mr Tech Toolkit 6.0.4.9000 add-on for Firefox 9

[CCpotter]

Oh man, i love this stuff, every time i got trouble with new words i have to copy it in Google Translate and listen to the pronouncation. Now with this thing i don't have to copy and paste any more!

Bravo!

[CCpotter]

No this thing doesn't work on my Chrome Browser, is this because i got a wrong version of my Chrome, cause i don't see any requirement about the Chrome version

[Curt]

note that you can only get the software to pronounce words that it has saved in its database, it will remain silent if you enter a word that is not saved there. This is for instance the case with many names or places

-Chrome