All language learners (and native speakers) have seen a word in their reading that they are not sure how to pronounce. These words are sometimes very complicated, technical terms, and at other times, the words are simple ones that we have heard many times but just cannot seem to say correctly!
My answer to these challenges, other than asking a close friend or colleague about the pronunciation, is Youglish.com. This webpage searches YouTube videos with transcripts for the word that you seek. You simply type the word that you would like to hear and see in context into its search bar. Then, you select the accent that you would like to hear. Finally, it generates a list of videos with this word. Some lists are quite large: You can see more than 2,500 examples of “cellular” and more than 42,600 examples of “present” in American English. Yet, others have fewer examples to offer with words like “interferon” and “polymerization” having less than 200 examples each.
This tool is user-friendly and provides multiple examples for each word. To learn the most possible from this tool, it is important to review multiple examples of the pronunciation to ensure that you are hearing and learning the general features of the word instead of one person’s speech pattern. You will find that there will be differences in how the word sounds as it relates to the other words in the sentence and the speaker’s rate of speech. It is important to pay attention to these shifts and add them to your understanding of these words because speakers you talk with may use any of these pronunciations in context.
Enjoy this tool! I hope Youglish.com is useful to you.
