Even though I speak four languages, learning foreign languages has never been easy for me. If I study for more than an hour, I literally start getting a headache. One of the hardest parts for me has always been listening comprehension. Even when I listen to study materials with perfect diction and high-quality recordings, I don’t always understand what’s being said. But when I had to deal with real-life speech — with accents, speech defects, background noise, and bad microphones — I completely failed. That’s when I realized: to truly learn how to understand people in the real world, you need to practice not with perfect recordings, but with real phrases spoken in real conditions. So what does a programmer do when faced with a problem? Instead of solving it manually, a programmer finds a way to automate the solution. That’s why I decided to create a service that helps people train their listening skills with examples from real speakers. That’s how soningo.com was born. On the site, users can record short phrases so that others can practice understanding them. I’d be very happy if you register and share some recordings — this way you’ll help me get better at understanding real speech, and at the same time help others too.

Soningo

Listening practice with accents, noise & imperfections.

Listening practice with accents, noise & imperfections.