pronunciation practice software

April 9, 2006 2:32 AM

I’m trying to learn Italian and I’d like to find some software to help me with pronunciation practice.

I’m thinking that the program would play a sound file, dividing it into silence delimited clips. The program should play a clip and then listen to the microphone. If there is a long and loud enough signal from the microphone the program should record the input until there is a long enough silence. At that point I should be able to replay the microphone input clip or the sound file clip as many times as I would like navigate to a neighboring sound file clip. A spectrum analyzer and the ability to slow down replay would be nice bonuses. I’m guessing I could hack something up with snd or Audacity but there must some open source program out there that will save me the effort.

posted by rdr to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

"Rosetta Stone" does all those things, but it's a commercial product.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:51 AM on April 9, 2006

I have to call a friend of mine tomorrow, but I cannot promise you anything as of now. my e-mail is in my profile, I'll be happy to help if I can
posted by matteo at 12:57 PM on April 9, 2006

Check out Pimsleur, too (I know it may be bastard-ish, but whip out a p2p prog--I'd say Soulseek--and you'll find a brazillion people with Pimsleur mp3s). They tend to do this pronunciation system with their languages...something like this (i'll use the the Japanese edition since that's the one I remember):

They'll start with the word; 'wakarimasu.'

Then they'll repeat it bit by bit so you can hear the pronunciation--'wa. ... waka. ... rimasu. ... ri. .... rimasu. ... wakarimasu.'

So you tend to hear the whole thing quite well.
posted by Lockeownzj00 at 7:49 PM on April 9, 2006