I recently stumbled upon a site called Forvo, whose sub-headline claims "All the words in the world. Pronounced."
I can't even begin to describe how excited I was to find it, and I don't even remember how that happened. I was so excited that I made an account right away and started exploring the site and recording pronunciations for as many words as I could in French, German, Esperanto and English.
What I failed to realize in my haste is that the site is intended for native pronunciations only... Or maybe I just ignored the request, believing that anyone can pass as a native if they pronounce things properly.
Well, I was wrong. Not long after I signed up, I received a message from one of the site's editors asking me to refrain from making recordings in German, as it is not my native language, no matter how confident I might feel about my pronunciation. The editor also mentioned that s/he could detect a "slight" accent in my recordings, and for that reason needed to delete all the words I'd pronounced in German.
I don't have much of an ego, but that was certainly a blow! I speak German with a slight accent? I had no idea! At first I was all offended and outraged; but then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be upset. The site explicitly requests that only native speakers pronounce words in their language for a reason, and it makes sense. Besides, who am I to say that I have no accent in German? I have to accept the word of the editor, a native speaker.
My one consolation in this case is that all the words I pronounced in French are still there for now. Either they were pronounced "perfectly", or a French-speaking editor has not yet had reason to review them and deem them unworthy. Also, because there are almost no native speakers of Esperanto, anyone can post pronunciations in that language, pending peer review (i.e. users across the site can vote on any given word pronunciation as "Good" or "Bad"). Obviously, the English words I recorded can stay. Yippee!
I guess it's a good thing the German-speaking editor got to me before I started recording words in even more languages! I mean, my pronunciation is pretty good IMOSHO, but on this site at least, I'll have to defer to the natives.
You can hear my horrible pronunciations at http://www.forvo.com/user/lingvamanto
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