Forvo for genealogy is today’s post. Using crowdsourcing, Forvo offers audio clips of words in foreign languages.

Forvo is the largest online reference for pronunciations with a database of nearly 4 million words pronounced in over 330 languages – all created and maintained by native speakers. Forvo‘s tagline is, “All the words in the world. Pronounced.”

About Forvo

In 2008, Forvo was founded with the mission of improving spoken communication across cultures by creating a platform where users could share pronunciations of words in their native language and listen to words pronounced by other native speakers. Today, Forvo is the largest online reference for pronunciations with a database of nearly 4 million words pronounced in over 330 languages – all created and maintained by native speakers.

Forvo continues to work toward its mission as a go-to reference for authentic and veritable word pronunciations through over 116 million site visits annually and over 500,000 registered users. In 2013, Forvo was included in Time Magazine’s “50 Best Websites of the Year.”

How Does Forvo Work?

All sound clips on Forvo.com are created by native-speaking users. Site users vote on each clip to ensure that the highest quality sound clips have priority in the site’s search results. The pronunciations are also reviewed and edited by a volunteer team of editors. Forvo.com envision in 2007 by co-founder Israel Rondón. The following year the site went live.

Using Forvo

I’ve been doing a lot of work on my Prussian lines in my German Genealogy class. My eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Prussian villages are now located in Poland since the end of World War II. They have Polish names which I have no idea how to pronounce.

For example, Freienwalde, Pomerania, Prussia, is now Chociwel, Poland. Click here to hear is how it’s pronounced, which of course is nothing like how I would have guessed.

For more information, email [email protected]. Or find Forvo on Twitter @forvo and on Facebook at facebook.com/forvopronunciations.

Try Forvo for genealogy research and let me know what you think.

For more Sassy Jane posts on translation and genealogy, click here.