Web Buzz: Howjsay.com helps you pronounce foreign words
Howjsay.com helps you avoid the embarrassment of mispronouncing words when you’re in a foreign land.
What’s hot: If only I’d known about this website before I went to Australia for the first time. I would have known how to say “didgeridoo.” When discussing travel to Southeast Asia among friends, I would not have mangled my pronunciation of “Angkor Wat.”
Just type a word or phrase into Howjsay.com (its dictionary has more than 135,000 entries), and move your mouse over the pink word that pops up (or click “submit”). You’ll hear a pleasant voice pronounce it for you. I tried to stump it with “Rijksmuseum,” but sure enough, the narrator told me that the word was Dutch and then pronounced the Amsterdam museum’s name with grace. Howjsay is also available as an iPhone App or a BlackBerry app (both $3.99).
What’s not: You might not want to show it to your kids. There are plenty of four-letter words in the database.
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