Posted on

6 Bookmarks for Pronunciation Help

The other night I did a voice over job for a pharmaceutical company. Guess what was in it? A whole bunch of fancy medical terms with more syllables than I’ve got fingers.

In other words… a bunch of words I haven’t the foggiest idea how to pronounce.

Where do you turn when you’ve got tricky words in the script and the client didn’t provide a pronunciation guide? Here’s six great websites to bookmark so you come out looking like a genius!

6 Bookmarks for Pronunciation Help

Merriam Webster: This is the one that saved me the other night. It’s got a ton of audio pronunciations for those fancy words!
Bookmark – http://m-w.com

Dictionary: If you can’t find it on m-w, odds are you’ll find it here. Phonetic and audio pronunciations, as you’d expect.
Bookmark – http://dictionary.com

Forvo: Their tagline is “All the words in the world. Pronounced.” I guess that about sums it up, then!
Bookmark – http://forvo.com

HowToPronounce: I guess the title kind of says it all, doesn’t it? This one is great because you can hear pronunciations in different languages. That’s been particularly handy for me when voicing scripts for clients in countries outside the US and Canada.
Bookmark – http://howtopronounce.com

HowJSay: It’s positioned as, “A free online talking dictionary of English pronunciation.” That’s exactly what it is!
Bookmark – http://howjsay.com

EmmaSaying: Emma has saved my butt more times than I care to recall. You can search single words and phrases on the site.
Bookmark – http://emmasaying.com

Have any sites you like to use? Share them in the comments.