Over the coming months, the Macquarie editorial team will embark on a mammoth project: recording thousands of words as audio pronunciations. Camping out in our in-house studio, the team will record words in the Aussie vernacular based on their frequency of use within our language. If you subscribe to the Macquarie Dictionary Online you will already be aware that thousands of word entries contain three kinds of pronunciations: the international phonetic alphabet version, the simpler ”say” pronunciation and an audio pronunciation, as below.
It has been many years since the initial audio pronunciations were recorded for Macquarie. In recognition of how important an audio pron can be to everyone from the hearing impaired to English learners and audiobook narrators, we have set ourselves the task of producing audio recordings for as many of the words missing this feature as possible. Some entries that are missing audio pronunciations include, alright, adaptive, app, anime and (funnily enough) audio, and that’s just the A’s!
If you subscribe to the Macquarie Dictionary Online you will receive the content as part of your subscription for no additional cost, as is the case for all annual updates. If you are interested in licensing the existing 25,000+ mp3 files to build a product or service, please contact us to find out more about data licenses.
So keep your ears perked over the coming months for new pronunciations, and spare a thought for our editors who will spend a lot of time staring at a microphone as they seek to capture the stresses of Aussie English.
