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We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…
We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…
This app would have been ideal for me; I'm now looking to improve my pronunciation after working on my grammar for a while. But I lost trust in the first 15 minutes; if you check lesson 1/4 of "Unvoiced and Voiced consonants," the app expects me to repeat the following phrase with an American accent:
> This house is a part of a low-income housing project.
But the coach audio clip does not say that; the coach says:
> This house is part of a low-income housing project.
So the audio clip of the coach features what seems to be correct grammar, the engine that corrects my pronunciation does not. If I try to say the phrase the way the app describes it, with "is a part", I'm able to pass the exercise. If I say the way the coach says it ("is part"), then it fails me.
So is my perception that the app does not follow American grammar. It is not great to have an app that helps me improve my pronunciation while it screws my grammar.
Also, how do I delete my account?
We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…
I disagree fundamentally with the premise here. An accent is simply someone applying the rules of pronunciation from one language to another. No accent is right or wrong but your product seems to imply that North American accents are desirable or correct while accents rooted in non-english languages are less desirable. Instead of trying to "acquire an accent" why not focus on clarity of speech and pronunciation? If s…
Exactly, and that is the wrong way to speak the "another" language. The ears of native speakers are tuned to a certain pronunciation, any departures from that will be harder to understand, it will be a distraction.
You might not like it, but that's how it is.
> Many regional accents from the UK are difficult to understand because they use non standard grammar, sentence structure and place stress and intonation differently.
True. It's also true that many regional or working class accents in the UK will impair your job prospects in the UK. It's probably better to come with a Swiss or Norwegian accent than a Geordie one, when applying for a job at Goldman.
We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…
This is a native english speaker: https://youtu.be/pit0OkNp7s8 We are a diverse bunch
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The NA English accent is considered the most clear and easy to understand. This is not a controversial opinion and is held by virtually all non-native English speakers around the world. Frankly there are billions of people who would kill to speak English like a native American. It’s about economics, not identity politics.
>The NA English accent is considered the most clear and easy to understand. Do you have any evidence of this? I would believe that it depends strongly on the language(s) you already know. Perhaps you are confusing prevalence with clarity. North America has tremendous soft power - more so than any other part of the world and their accents are ubiquitous. Clarity is not necessarily function of the accent.
So I don't think it's solely about American soft power, although that will undoubtedly play a part.
I'm Bruno, founder of Abstra ( https://abstra.app/ ). Abstra is a no-code tool that allows designers to build web apps. Imagine Figma, but we export a functional web application. Here's a timelapsed demo showing it in action: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fObVcHcd_w . As opposed to most famous no-code tools, we don't do any nested-based editing (e.g. tree structure like Webflow - which is an amazing tool, but is b…
We’re Anada and Ilya, the co-founders of BoldVoice ( https://www.boldvoice.com/ ). BoldVoice is an accent coaching app that helps non-native speakers learn and practice the standard American accent. As immigrants to the US, we’ve personally experienced that having a foreign accent can affect your confidence and job opportunities (by as much as 20%, according to studies). So we built this app to help non-native Englis…
Hi, congrats on your launch. This app would have been ideal for me; I'm now looking to improve my pronunciation after working on my grammar for a while. But I lost trust in the first 15 minutes; if you check lesson 1/4 of "Unvoiced and Voiced consonants," the app expects me to repeat the following phrase with an American accent: > This house is a part of a low-income housing project. But the coach audio clip does not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I invite you to watch one of our dialect coaches, Ron Carlos, share a bit about both the values and process that he brings to the table at BoldVoice (1:43 mins) - https://vimeo.com/572809188 As our name implies, we want to help non-native English speakers feel bolder and more confident when speaking English. To feel more confident, indeed, one may need to more deeply learn the rules…
You have not addressed the fundamental point of my comment - why are you selling a north american accent in particular? Clear speech is not predicated on acquiring a certain accent and i feel you are feeding into the stereotype of an accent determining the quality of the speaker, not the content of speech. Edit - you ignore the fact that a native speaker of English may have an accent that is not North American. Think…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I disagree fundamentally with the premise here. An accent is simply someone applying the rules of pronunciation from one language to another. No accent is right or wrong but your product seems to imply that North American accents are desirable or correct while accents rooted in non-english languages are less desirable. Instead of trying to "acquire an accent" why not focus on clarity of speech and pronunciation? If s…
The NA English accent is considered the most clear and easy to understand. This is not a controversial opinion and is held by virtually all non-native English speakers around the world. Frankly there are billions of people who would kill to speak English like a native American. It’s about economics, not identity politics.
Probably, at least in poor and undeveloped countries. But a lot of people would kill even more to speak with a posh British Accent, it's really hard to sound sophisticated when speaking American English.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You have not addressed the fundamental point of my comment - why are you selling a north american accent in particular? Clear speech is not predicated on acquiring a certain accent and i feel you are feeding into the stereotype of an accent determining the quality of the speaker, not the content of speech. Edit - you ignore the fact that a native speaker of English may have an accent that is not North American. Think…
As a fellow immigrant working in the US and as someone working with non native speakers from other regions in the world, I can assure you this is not about racism. It is about team cohesion, clarity, getting things done in an international team. People have to spend extra brain cycles just to tune in to how you say things, before they can focus on what you actually say. This is especially true at the beginning of wor…
I don't think you need any better example than support call centers. How many people routinely avoid calling for support or simply loathe the idea of doing so because they're like to get someone with a heavy Indian, Filipino, etc. accent that leads to the scenario I mentioned above ("whats?")? When it comes down to it, it has a real cost in many ways.