Welcome to the pronunciation practice tool.
Here, you can practice your pronunciation of words and sentences with the help of AI.
Just enter a word or sentence in German, and hit record and say it and then hit record again to stop. You’ll get your feedback instantly. The recording is limited to 20 seconds (for now) and the character limit is 200. That’s enough for a fairly long sentence. But don’t copy paste in large chunks of text ;).
Over time, I’ll add audio synthesis and possibly also an example generator here, but for now it’s “just” this tool. It’s pretty cool already and I hope you enjoy it.
Let me know in the comments, if you have questions or suggestions.
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Do you want more info? Check the FAQ below
Something is not working? Check the trouble shooting section below.
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FAQ
What kind of AI is that?
The AI is a deep neural net that was developed and trained by a small team at EF Languages specifically as a tool to get feedback on ones pronunciation. It takes a written German sentence as input and it grades your rhythm, speed, melody and of course the quality of sounds. It does so for every single word and also gives an overall rating.
Note that it’s NOT based on one single recording. There are many ways to say something and get 100% score.
How good is the AI?
It does a surprisingly good job at grading native speakers, even if they mumble or swallow sounds. The AI still grades them near 100% because it has learned that this is how native speakers sound.
However, it has some weak spots here and there. For instance, I have trouble with the word “du”, which I have to pronounce overly clearly to get a good rating.
But the system generally gives you a good indication of how well you sound.
What do the colors mean?
The AI grades in percentages (x% of native speaker), and I have assigned the colors based on those percentages. The cutoff between the levels is somewhat arbitrary. Here’s an overview:
What is “good”?
If you can get it to green, that means you’re somewhere between 80 and 99 percent. That is good enough. Of course you can try to go for 100%, but for some words it probably won’t work.
I am a native speaker and I get 100% most of the time, but not always.
How do I know what the problem is?
That’s a bit beyond what the tool can give you at the moment. The only thing you can do is listen to yourself and then play around. But once I have integrated voice synthesis, you can compare yourself to a native speaker.
Trouble Shooting
I can’t record anything!
The browser needs permission to access the microphone. It might be disabled for this website. To enable it, click on the lock icon next to the URL. There, you can enable it.
My mic is enabled and working, but it’s still not working
Try a different browser. If that is not working, chances are that you are using an iOS device (iPhone, iPad). Apple is not able and willing to provide the standard mic support classes that every other system uses. It works on some websites and doesn’t on others and it tends to not work here.
I can’t really do much about it, so maybe just try another device. The issue has been known since 2017 at least and Apple doesn’t give a sh*.
I get very poor results
If you’re getting poor results, chances are that the recording quality is not very good. Play back some recordings and listen to how they sound. If they’re muffled or noisy, that has a huge influence on the grading. Try to get closer to the mic if possible.
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