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howjsay.com Notes on using this dictionary 1 Enter the word you want in lower case and when it appears in pink, mouse over it to hear it spoken as often as you want. Each word is individually pre-recorded and no form of synthetic speech is used. 2 Both American and British spellings are provided. 3 Pronunciation is in Standard British English, with World English alternatives (see also para 6 below). Pronunciations are researched online, normally based on a minimum of two sources using IPA transcriptions and/or sound files. 4 The dictionary shows the closest cluster of letters that it has to your request - for example "furious" used to return "curious". Accents are not recognised. 5 The lexical corpus includes all of the General Service List (Bauman and Culligan 1995 version). This is a collection of 2,284 commonly used English words. More words will be added progressively, selecting them on the basis that most non-native speakers of English would be unlikely to pronounce a selected word in a universally understandable way without first hearing it spoken by a native speaker. Another source of new words is you: unsuccessful searches are automatically considered for inclusion. [Addendum May 13, 2007: this last source has, it turns out, swamped all others.] 6 Where alternative pronunciations are given, they are either
[Addendum: Sep 23, 2006: Some familiar American alternatives are also given. If they are not widely used outside the United States, they are prefixed with the words "Also American..." (Eg "Also American: [t + schwa + meidou]").] 7 Profane language and erotica are excluded from the dictionary in the interests of child learners. [Addendum: May 22, 2010: they are now to be included, by popular demand and also because it seems narrow-minded to arbitarily censor the corpus in this way]. 8 No phonetic transcriptions are provided in this dictionary, for two reasons: firstly, the public seldom uses them and when it does so is often misled by them; secondly, any transcription will always be an inferior imitation of the original sounds. Transcriptions were necessary in the age of the book, because books cannot speak. [Addendum May 30, 2007: we nevertheless developed our own phonetic alphabet for annotation purposes, designed for speed, conciseness and flexibility using a standard computer keyboard.][October 14, 2009: You can nevertheless see a phonetic transcription for the commoner entries by clicking on the "define your entry here" link]. 9 This dictionary will be a work in progress for many years to come, so please do not condemn it yet for its limited size. Judge it rather on the entries to date of high-frequency words such as "do" or "has". And please feel free to criticise, report errata, and make suggestions. 10 Some people are quite passionate about
the pronunciation of, for example, "contróversy". But
it is our task here to record the sounds of current educated English
rather than to prescribe them. The fact is that the American "cóntroversy"
now enjoys wide acceptance throughout the English-speaking world (not
least perhaps due to the phonologically seditious work of CNN), and
so it is our duty, however sombre, or indeed somber, to offer it as
an alternative to "contróversy". It is of such
stiff stuff that the upper lip of the British phonetician should be
fashioned, giving short shrift to chauvinism. Tim
Bowyer, Amman, Jordan June 2006 Dedication: the genial curiosity of Miss Magali Naime, of Choueifat, Beirut, Lebanon prompted the creation of this website.
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