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Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

real-time-pronunciation.web.app

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Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#1

Post by rubengt01 »

English is my second language, and I'm always conscious of my speech in order to detect when the listener is having trouble understanding my accent and mispronunciations. A few years ago, I gave an investor pitch, and at the end of the presentation, the investor corrected my pronunciation for a critical word that was the core of my business. I had been mispronouncing the word the entire time without even realizing it.

Recently, I've been interviewing for a few companies, and I decided to create an app for my personal use with two goals in mind.

* To practice for my technical presentations and detect/correct mistakes before the actual presentation * To detect when my speech was unclear during the interviews and become more attentive to my pronunciation in those particular moments.

The app has been extremely helpful to me, so I cleaned it up and am sharing it for others to use. If you are preparing for a high-stakes presentation or conversation, this tool will help you practice and correct mispronunciation. I'm looking forward to hearing feedback. If you want to try it out, here's the link: https://real-time-pronunciation.web.app/.

Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app
real-time-pronunciation.web.app

Re: Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#2

Post by matheist »

Looks really neat! I'd love to be able to click on the individual words in the report to hear back how I said it.

Also I'm a native speaker and I'd argue with the errors I got :). I think in each case they're valid alternates in rapid speech. Most of the reported errors were for vowel substitutions, where I used a weak form (schwa) instead of the corresponding vowel-as-written. E.g. [əktɪvɪtiz] instead of [æktɪvɪtiz] for activities. (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EaXYas58_kc)

Which (now that I think of it) you already get right in some cases, e.g. for the second "t" there — in my American accent that's flapped and there was no alert raised.

Re: Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#3

Post by rubengt01 »

matheist wrote: post #2

Looks really neat! I'd love to be able to click on the individual words in the report to hear back how I said it. Also I'm a native speaker and I'd argue with the errors I got :). I think in each case they're valid alternates in rapid speech. Most of the reported errors were for vowel substitutions, where I used a weak form (schwa) instead of the corresponding vowel-as-written. E.g. [əktɪvɪtiz] instead of [æktɪvɪtiz]…

Thanks for the feedback. I will add the functionality to play back the mispronounced word.

Re: Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#5

Post by Manik_agg »

I tried it, looks neat and super helpful for folks who want to improve their english speaking.

I know this is early but would have loved an app for the same.

Feedback - Can you let me play back the mispronounced word along with what's the right pronunciation for the same?

Re: Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#7

Post by rubengt01 »

carllippert wrote: post #6
android521 wrote: post #4

Looks great. are there great open source libraries I can use to build an app like that?

also curious of this. ive seen some api's out there for pronuncaition help. maybe they are using that?

Yes, many libraries these days do pronunciation assessments. For this project, I used Azure Pronunciation Assessment (https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/ai-services/speech-s...)

Re: Show HN: A real-time English Pronunciation feedback app

#8

Post by rubengt01 »

Manik_agg wrote: post #5

I tried it, looks neat and super helpful for folks who want to improve their english speaking. I know this is early but would have loved an app for the same. Feedback - Can you let me play back the mispronounced word along with what's the right pronunciation for the same?

Thanks. Yes, I will work on the play back. Could you send the feedback about the mobile app on the website? That way I can notify you when I build it.
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