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How to use the online Spanish pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech
- Go to http://showroom.daedalus.es/es/tecnologias-de-la-lengua/phonetictrans/phonetictrans.php, enter your text, select your phonetic symbol set:
- Unlike with the Portuguese help, there is no text-to-speech option here.
Microsoft Contextual Translator
Certainly an advance over the MS-Word thesaurus (unlike the MS-Word 2007 and up spell check, still not contextual). Does this work at least well enough to serve as a fruitful pedagogical exercise: “Which phrase does not belong in the group?”
MS Universal Language Input Tool offers correction and transliteration on any web page
Using the UIME, you can “type any language with any keyboard on any web page, using only the Roman characters present on every keyboard.”
And you can install your favorite input language in your web browser, like so:
MS-Engkoo glossing of Chinese newspaper text
- Learners of Mandarin can increase not only their cross-cultural knowledge, when using the English versions of two of the biggest Chinese newspapers: “China Daily has adopted Engkoo’s “hover translation” feature—hover your cursor over an English word or phrase and get an inline Chinese translation— on its China-facing website” and the People’s Daily, the largest official newspaper in China, uses the same feature in its English website”
- Make sure you are on the right version (English version for Chinese user) of the site (
are the choices you want to see on top) and “Enable Bing Dictionary”in lower right corner: ![china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-enable_thumb1_thumb.png?w=244&h=40 "china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]")
- Then hover:
![china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-example_thumb1_thumb1.png?w=559&h=462 "china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]")
.
![china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-enable_thumb1.png "china daily engkoo enable_thumb[1]"){kind=small}
![china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]](https://thomasplagwitz.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/china-daily-engkoo-example_thumb11.png "china daily engkoo example_thumb[1]")
Chinese newspapers
- China Daily is the largest Chinese newspaper available in English. It has a variety of versions: here is the version for the US, for cross-cultural learning, while the English version for speakers of Chinese is valuable both for learners of Mandarin and English.
- The government-run newspaper People’s Daily has an English version, also with language learner glossing.
MS-Bing Dictionary for Chinese learners of English–and vice versa?
- Link: http://dict.bing.com.cn/?ulang=EN-US&tlang=ZH-CN#%3Ahome, powered by Engkoo:
- This looks like a pretty evolved learning tool: It has instant suggestions that include usage information and translations.
- Rich results that include contextual, parallel web-as-corpus matches in text and text-to-speech (that, on spot-checking, seems barely noticeably computer-generated).
Sample of how students use the foreign language TTS (text-to-speech) in the LRC
Last week, I noticed this student in the LRC working on a speaking assignment in her SLA class. First, she wrote a draft of her presentation. She then had the Deskbot TTS wizard (in the lower right of her screen) read out the draft to her. She recorded her version, modeling after the Deskbot’s pronunciation. Then she had the Deskbot read out the draft again, to compare with her own recording.
Look for the little guy in the lower right corner of the screen with the cartoon bubble over his head.
I favor the use of the Deskbot TTS (a Windows XP technology) as an easily accessible speaking dictionary, including during face-to-face teaching, when students may otherwise be too shy to make an utterance because they are not sure about the pronunciation of a single word, or even ask the teacher to pronounce it for them. Prosodically, the deskbot TTS leaves many things to be desired. Let’s hope that Windows 7 will enable us to set up more advanced TTS support in the LRC.
How to use the online Portuguese pronunciation help to generate phonetic alphabet transcriptions and text-to-speech
- Go to http://www.co.it.pt/~labfala/g2p/
- Write or paste your text into the textbox:“Grafemas”
- Choose your preferred phonetic alphabet (IPA, SAMPA) and other options.
- Press button: “Converter” to see results.
- Press button: “Sintetizar” to hear results.
- Like so:
- Or click here to view a demo (requires Windows Media Player) with audio (download requires Windows Media Player). Our example was:
- Input: Tudo bem? É o jeitinho brasileiro. Oí, árbitro! Cadê o penalty? Não, não posso faze-lo.
- Output: tˈudu bɐ̃ĩ ˈɛ u ʒɐitˈiɲu bɾɐzilˈɐiɾu oˈi ˈaɾbitɾu kɐdˈe u pˈenalti nˈɐ̃ũ nˈɐ̃ũ pˈɔsu fˈazɘlu
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Other ways to find help
If you cannot find it here, look there: 5,500 Language-Learning Links and Programs for learning or teaching 150 languages
Shortcuts:Our Lists, Our Maps, LRC Staff Moodle Site,LRC Project Moodle Site, 49erexpress, UNCC Moodle, Student Recordings: s:claslcslrcsanakostudent
Learning usage samples: Sanako oral exam, Kaltura webcam presentation, Dictation with speech recognition, Sanako written exam, Chinese and Japanese interactive stroke-order practice
Test the Sanako Installer, Webbrowser Popup Konfigurator for XP, or Windows7, faster LRC TeacherPC Log-in Let MS facilitate diacritics writing by installing for you US-International keyboard layout
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