Forvo.com: jak víc hlav víc namluví

• Authors: Michal Škrabal , Pavel Machač

Title variants

EN

Forvo.com: so many people, so many recordings

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The article describes the Czech section of the crowdsourced audio dictionary available on the website forvo.com (2008–2021), which is remarkable for several reasons: for its scope, reach, linguistic diversity, and the very unique variability of pronunciation recorded. We compare the website with some other open multilingual databases of audio recordings and touch on the dichotomous relationship between the intended concept of the website and its actual form. We also briefly characterize the list of Czech entries and summarize the advantages and weaknesses of the available data for scientific purposes. Finally, we consider the typical user of the website, either a provider of audio data (speaker), whose speech behaviour is obviously influenced by the specific speech situation during the recording, or a non-native lay recipient (listener), who is fully dependent on the confidence in the representativeness of the specific pronunciation variants. Finally, we define the notion of representativeness, which will later, in our further study, serve as an evaluation framework for the phonetic analysis of the recordings.

Keywords

CS

crowdsourcing; forvo.com; občanská věda; zvukový výslovnostní slovník

EN

audio pronunciation dictionary; citizen science; crowdsourcing; forvo.com

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Naše řeč (Our Speech)
• Year: 2021
• Volume: 104
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 143-152
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Michal Škrabal

• Naše řeč, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic

author

Pavel Machač

• Naše řeč, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic