14 Comments
1377
I must admit that I don't understand how these Google Translate voice generators work, but I think sometimes they might get a consonant from a previous word or something like that. Of course, I ask, because sometimes that is actually how it is pronounced. I would never have known, for instance, that the Swedish pronoun "de" is pronounced /don/, if I hadn't asked.
My best advice is that if you learn the Welsh alphabet then you can pronounce pretty much all words other than a couple of irregularities, and if you just read it out using the sounds for each letter you'll come pretty close to how it is pronounced.
- 1377
Indeed, I have generally found that to be the case. Of course, the Irish and Danish will also tell you that their languages are entirely phonetic, which could only appear true to an Irishman or a Dane. I would certainly make no such claim for English.
Yes I do forget sometimes that I have a natural understanding of how to pronounce Welsh words that learners wouldn't have.
- 1377
No, what I was getting at was that, unlike Irish or Danish, I find Welsh quite easy to follow. Indeed, I am usually able to do the little dictation exercises even if I have completely forgotten the word. There are very few languages I have had that experience with on Duolingo, maybe Welsh, Ukrainian, and, most of the time, Turkish.
- 1377
And I just discovered the Incubator, so now I know that what someone told me about Google Translate voice generators was not actually the case.
Ivona.com's Gwyneth is having a problem here! Go to ivona.com and get 'Welsh, Geraint' to pronounce the word instead - that one seems to avoid some of Gwyneth's mistakes. You can also hear a real-voice recording of gwaethaf at geiriadur.com
Yes, one of a relatively small number of sound problems. There is nothing that we can do about these as a team except to disable the sound, and we feel that it is better to keep it as most of the time the sound is a useful aid to learningl.
The sound comes from the Ivona system (www.ivona.com), and I have recently raised once particular example with them directly as a test case to see if, and how quickly, they can fix it. If they fix that one then we can address the others.
As the moment you will see from the course notes in the first unit, and in reminders in some subsequent ones, that we are asking people not to raise sound problems through the reporting system for the time being - we already know where the problems are and we are exploring ways of getting them fixed.
You will see from earlier responses in this discussion, and in the course notes, that you can often go to other sources to hear the sound pronounced correctly.
- 1377
The sound is terribly helpful most of the time, so please do not disable it.
OK, thanks Ibisc - I won't mention sound problems again! They don't happen often anyway.
