Listen to Spanish, listening skills, improve your Spanish pronunciation, Spanish and English listening texts, help with reading English and Spanish on the Internet, Spanish and English reading aids.
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Listen to Spanish, listening skills, improve your Spanish pronunciation, Spanish and English listening texts, help with reading English and Spanish on the Internet, Spanish and English reading aids.
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| REAL SPEAK: A program for listening to texts in Spanish.
As a student of Spanish, would you like to be able to hear the Spanish texts you read on the Internet? You could listen to e-mails you receive and write, articles on the web, letters you write in Spanish, reports, in fact, anything that can be copied with your mouse. I have found a program called "REAL SPEAK" by a company called "NEXT UP" which makes this possible and the result is instant.
When reading in Spanish, do you often wonder at how a new word is pronounced? Just by copying the word or text on the screen this program allows you to listen and practise Spanish pronunciation. Furthermore, the speech quality is excellent (although digital) and the Spanish and South American voices sound human and authentic. This is done by exceptional digital quality at 22khz where most digital voice are 16khz maximum and usually inferior to this.
After having used this program extensively I believe it to be a useful tool for improving your listening and pronunciation skills and making study of a new language more interesting and enjoyable. |
A new innovation that can be adapted for the learner of Spanish.
This software is designed for native speakers of Spanish (and English) to reduce eye fatigue; you can turn away from the screen and listen to texts instead of straining your eyes hour after hour. In fact, if you are interested in this aspect of text to speech software, the basic "TEXT ALOUD" platform which supports the REAL SPEAK voices also provides English text to speech voices of a lesser quality for email reading purposes etc.. See link at the end of this article.
However, I have experimented with this program in Spanish and have realized its benefits as a valuable Spanish language teaching aid. Although the program uses a digital voice, the diction is clear, as I have said, and uses correct intonation recognition of sentence structure in affirmatives and interrogatives etc.. The voice processor recognizes accented words and places the stress accordingly - helpful for students to understand where and why accents are placed in Spanish and the correct use of Spanish phonetics..
You can try the free trial version to listen to the voice quality. |
Listen to the voice quality
Below, you can listen to a sample of the Spanish voices, here, available in MP3 format (WAV also available.) MP3 format means you can convert any text to Spanish speech and, if you wish, record the spoken text onto CD for listening to Spanish in your car or listening to Spanish on your portable MP3 player: (For best quality you require an equivalent of Pentium III and processor of 500khz or more.)
(Castilian Spanish voice.) (Mexican Spanish voice.) (Mexican Spanish voice.)
Obtaining the TEXT ALOUD software and REAL SPEAK Spanish voices.
There are two parts of this package. First the TEXT ALOUD software (at the moment $29.95), with voices but not at a natural speaker standard. Then the REAL SPEAK VOICES ($45.00 for one natural voice - you only need one), which needs the TEXT ALOUD software to function. There are more than one voice available; you choose the accent and gender of the speaker you prefer and the Spanish accent you want to practise.
Free download of TEXT ALOUD
You can download a free trial of the TEXT ALOUD software here...
For purchase of a TEXT ALOUD + a REAL SPEAK Spanish voice, Click here...
Well, that's about it! As English Spanish Link.com is about promoting bilingual use of English and Spanish, I thought this program deserved a mention. I offer my e-mail if you have any queries. Click here for e-mail.
Michael Bilbrough (Editor of English Spanish Link. January 2006) Read about the editor: Click here |