China Bing Dictionary makes learning English fun

There are some odd words in English, especially those originating from other languages, that are not pronounced the way they are written (wonder if there is a word for these kind of words). Mispronouncing such words could make you a laughing stock.

Unlike some other online dictionaries that just read out the pronunciation, Bing Dictionary for China also has karaoke-style videos for some 10 million sample sentences.

According to PCWorld, Matt Scott, the project lead for Bing Dictionary is the model for the videos currently online. And no, he has not actually spoken all those 10 million sample sentences

"Rather than repeatedly tape a person speaking the different sample sentences over and over again, Microsoft has found a way to synthesize the sounds and artificially mouth the facial movements of the model speaking in the videos.


It works by capturing shots of all the different pronunciations the model can express in a five-hour process that maps the person's lips, Scott said. The technology then finds the best match between the lips and what word the programmers want the model to say, creating an accurate lip synch. The end result is a video of the model mouthing the words of the sample sentence while a computerized voice reads it out loud."

I hope Bing brings this feature to other countries as well.

Also see:
HOW TO pronounce foreign names
WordWeb - the desktop English teacher