Forvo Pronunciation Reviews

by Alex The Unicorn

‼️ DONT WASTE YOUR MONEY ‼️
I stumbled across ForvoPronunciation on google as I was trying to figure out how to pronounce a word in Nahuatl and couldn’t find anything. The website gave me an answer and so I figured I’d look up another word as I found it pretty helpful. I was then prompted to make an account so I could have access to the second word but after trying to start the account it told me my device wasn’t compatible and I needed to download ForvoPronunciation . So, I go to ForvoPronunciation Store and see ForvoPronunciation costs $2.99 or so which I decided was worth it if I had access to all these pronunciations. I wont even get into the struggle of trying to make my account on ForvoPronunciation (it took a while and I was very sure by then it was a scam) but after finally getting access to ForvoPronunciation I looked up the word I was originally looking for and found no results. I, then, just for the fun of it decided to look up the word that had led me to the site and also couldn’t find any results. To rephrase, I couldnt find any results on ForvoPronunciation that I paid for for a word I had looked up for free on their website and gotten a pronunciation for.

by Thinkology

So I take the $3 plunge to help as I’m learning Swedish. Just to practice searching, I use the word, “Hello” and hit search:

“Sorry, Forvo cannot find your word. Do you want to add it?”

You’re kidding me, right? Sure, let’s add this FIRST WORD WE ALL LEARN in a foreign language. And the response:

“Hello is already in Forvo in this language.” So where is the pronunciation?

Is it a secret? It must be...along with tons of other words I’ve looked up. Yet, I can go to the website and get these words. Why charge for ForvoPronunciation ? It does less than the free website!

This is a $3 ripoff and disappointment. Swedish is available in your list of languages in ForvoPronunciation . At the bare minimum it should be supported for the most basic of terms; or you should make it clear BEFORE purchase what it can and can’t do...in this case, it can’t do anything in Swedish. Thanks for taking my money...it understood THAT language just fine.

As it is, the IKEA catalog is more useful than ForvoPronunciation.

by Natysol53910

ForvoPronunciation does not really work, I payed for it because someone recommended it but it doesn’t do what I am looking for. I tried to look for the phonetics symbols to learn how to pronounce better, it doesn’t have it.

Also, ForvoPronunciation supposed to record your voice and probably it would give you feed back, but the record never gets sent.

There are better free apps than this one.

by School Observer

Cant get what was once a useful app to even work after I updated it. After updating required me to create an account, but then would not allow me to do so. It said I couldn't use my email as it was not valid. I had been using ForvoPronunciation for years happily. It must have been sold to someone or something. Very disappointing.

by Animex49

I’ll admit I haven’t taken a long time to try to work with this, but it was very frustrating. I like it on the web, because I can look up all kinds of words, and languages other than the usual 4 or 5 Western European languages. But if you get outside of those languages, there’s almost nothing there. I was really disappointed. It wasn’t even worth the two or three dollars that I paid for it. It’s a waste of time for me.

by Ji_gga

I was very excited to get ForvoPronunciation , but was quickly disappointed. First of all, it didn’t allow me to sign up, as it claimed that my information was “not available.” That was really annoying. Then, I was able to somehow use it without the need for signing up, but it wasn’t what I expected. I thought it would work like the website did. I guess it’s good I only wasted $2.99.

by The _R

Read the description it sounded promising. I tried to register to create an account. It says the userid and the email are in use. So i’m like oh so it must have taken my first attempt even though it said it dis no. Nope. So then i use facebook to login and it tells me the user is not active..???...Most of the functions require you to be signed in.....As of this moment a waste of time and money....

by V Hapn

I had used ForvoPronunciation for a while and was pretty happy with it. I don’t see the point of having to create an account now to use an app that I paid. Not all users are going to record their pronunciations and post them. My simple purpose is to look up pronunciations. ForvoPronunciation makes that one simple, essential task impossible without creating an account. If ForvoPronunciation was free, I would have followed the requirement. Now there is no point of using ForvoPronunciation when I can just use the web version. I don’t need another account and another password to keep track of.

by Blue Pine

UPDATE: It's been over a year, so I gave it another try on my iPad. Looks like they're getting closer to being useful, but there was no way to favorite a word. Perhaps it was hidden under the three dots at the right. HOWEVER, every time I tapped on the three dots, IT CRASHED AND CLOSED.

So I had to pull out an old iPhone that I never use, download an older version of ForvoPronunciation to that, and suddenly the three dots worked, and I was able to favorite a word.

So, since I don't want to use the older iPhone, and since ForvoPronunciation crashes on my iPad, I'm going to delete it again on my iPad, and hope they keep working on it. And I hope they'll eventually make it possible to allow me to save favorite pronunciations on my device.

It they keep working on this, and make it useful, I'll give it five stars. But for now, down to one star.

PREVIOUS REVIEW: Perhaps my expectations were too high. I can't really find any reason to use this. The website is easier, and better. I'll probably end up deleting this, unless they provide more functionality, like letting me save my favorite pronunciations on my device so that I can re-listen over and over without logging in. Now THAT would be helpful as I try to learn a new language.

by Shadow Plumber

Forvo is super awesome, but there are a handful of easy fixes that would make ForvoPronunciation a lot better:

The UI in the search screen is tiny and isn’t even close to utilizing the entire screen. Poor design.

There’s not button to quickly clear out the search bar. This is a simple efficiency issue. I’d rather not press backspace a bunch of times.

After typing a word into the search bar, pressing “done” on the keypad should be programmed to activate the search, but instead it just minimizes the keyboard and then you have to press “Search”. Another easily fixable efficiency issue.

It doesn’t need to know my location. It needs to know where I’m from. My language variant is not reliably tied to where I happen to be in the world at any given moment. My language variant is tied to where I’m from and where I’ve lived for a long time. So instead of asking for your location, ForvoPronunciation just needs to ask you where you’re from and where you’ve lived for longer than a year or so.

by James In AZ

Would be better if would work in landscape mode on the iPad, most of use use the iPad more like a computer now and i have disconnect the keypad to use. Wish the most popular recording of a word would come up first and not have to go down through several menus to retrieve. Otherwise good app for language learners.

by Xenon6

I have used the website for years and found immense value and help. I figured that I would buy ForvoPronunciation for a slightly more convenient use. For $2.99, I did expect a lot more functionality and content than what is available. Definitely not worth the cost, in my opinion.

One problem that I have come across is that recording new words is hit or miss on ForvoPronunciation , as maybe 30% of the words and phrases came out loud and clear enough to be worthwhile. All of these recordings were done one after another, in the same quiet environment, with the same microphone. I’ve made other recordings with this same mic with no issues, and have had 3-4 hour long conversations, again with no issues, before and after recording words for Forvo. Either the recording or the playback is having issues, but this problem only seems to exist on the Forvo app.

by !user¡

My main complaints with ForvoPronunciation interface are: not sure how often it is supposed to synchronize but it can take days, lack of control over your lists, and for some reason phrases can’t appear on your phone app, only words. It’s useful if you know what you want out of it, but come on guys, you can do better.

by BlaStar310

Being able to find actual people pronouncing words instead of computer generated voices is wonderful for learning correct pronunciation. I am studying the Russian language and there are subtleties that computer just don't get (yet). ForvoPronunciation is still buggy and in an hour of use crashed a few times. But that is ok because it is easy to just start it up again and continue searching for pronunciations. ForvoPronunciation deserves high marks in spite of its flaws. Bravo!

by Polyglot1979

This is a very useful tool to help with pronunciation. The only feature missing is landscape view. I use ForvoPronunciation on my iPad which I use almost entirely in landscape mode, so it would be nice to have that feature. Otherwise, I’m happy with ForvoPronunciation .

by Bambino Interiore

ForvoPronunciation has good coverage of the one language I have used it for (Italian), but the user interface is still pretty crude. For example, will not render in landscape format on the ipad, which is pretty inconvenient when you are using the ipad with an external keyboard.

by Obi-vaughan

As an audiobook book narrator, I have used Forvo as a great resource for years. There is only one drawback in my mind to ForvoPronunciation. It is portrait alignment only. For some reason the designers haven’t added a landscape option if you turn your iPad to the side.

by Don Twain

Wonderful to see this great site made available for the ipad/iphone. For those of us with Keyboards attached to our iPads, please let the interface rotate into Landscape mode.
Currently we have to tilt our heads sideways to read the screen. Thanks!

by Wwhit3o

This is a really helpful app for me. There is a feature to play audios for all favourite words. So I can listen to all words. I hope I can make a favourite list of 1000 words.
I use ForvoPronunciation daily. Thank you so much for making such a great app :)

by Omfganimal

After years of not using this (when I heavily used it once) I find myself coming back to find the pronunciation of aponeuroses where I could not find it anywhere else for the plural version. If you find yourself unable to find something on here, just use Google Translate as a last resort.