Have you ever been fascinated by the local languages people speak in their region? We have all met people from other regions of the country and their accent made the conversation more interesting because their mother tongue is different and therefore their accent.

While we don’t get the chance to meet people from around the world, the good thing is that we can still listen to various dialects from around the world at just one platform www.localingual.com — a site for curious souls who are eager to listen to the voices of the world.

This is a pure fun site, created to stroke your curiosity. But what is more compelling is the interactive nature of the site, where you are actually engaged in doing things and learning on your own.

As you land on localingual, the first thing to notice is the colourful world map on the home screen with each country in a specific colour. Hover your mouse on any specific country, click it, it will open a panel at the right side of the screen with options of languages, to listen to, you can further break the country into regions by zooming in. Click and listen to the dialect of that region, although most regions have their particular dialect recording, there are still some left out. But the good thing is anyone, from android or desktop can click on their region to record their voice if it’s missing.

The website is created by David Ding, a former Microsoft engineer and a world traveller who was fascinated by dialects and languages being spoken around the world which his backpacking trips allowed him to experience.

If you want to contribute, you can select a language, a country, gender of the voice, then record or upload a file. You may find some volunteers have already posted the recording of your selected region or country, but you can still contribute and introduce the name of the country, capital or a word or a phrase. As it’s a crowd-sourced platform, anyone can upload a recording for any country. Even if you’re not from there.

There is no doubt that this is a cultural education available for free, enjoy and contribute at www.localingual.com

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 11th, 2023