The short answer
baba has built Hebrew pronunciation scoring that works sound by sound, for baba Tutor in development: it works out how your sentence should sound, listens to your recording, and compares the two, including the throat sounds and the stress placement that mark an English speaker out.
- No major commercial pronunciation service covers Hebrew, so baba built its own.
- It is part of baba Tutor, in development inside the baba Learn app.
- Daily Situations in baba Pro+ already gives pronunciation with every correction.
baba Tutor is in development inside the baba Learn app, which is in private testing. The Hebrew voice tutor in the baba translator web app is live today.
Why Nobody Checks Your Hebrew
Pronunciation scoring is a solved problem for English. Microsoft's assessment covers 33 languages, and Hebrew is not among them. Speechace and ELSA, the two names people reach for, are English-first. So a Hebrew learner who wants to know whether they were understood has, until now, had to ask an Israeli.
baba built the missing piece: it turns the Hebrew you were meant to say into the sounds it should have, turns your recording into the sounds you actually made, and lines the two up one sound at a time.
What Actually Gives You Away
Four things separate an English speaker from an Israeli, and none of them show up in writing.
| What | The problem | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| The throat pair ח and כ | English has no sound at the back of the throat, so both flatten to an h or a k | It changes the word: חם (hot) and הם (they) are not the same |
| The letter ע | Usually dropped entirely | Israelis hear it immediately, even where it is faint in modern speech |
| The Israeli ר | Rolled or said the English way instead of the sound made at the back of the throat | The single loudest marker of a foreign accent |
| Stress | English speakers stress the first syllable; Hebrew usually stresses the last | Stress alone separates real words, so the wrong one changes the meaning |
Vowels You Cannot See
Ordinary Hebrew is written without vowels, which means a word on the page often has more than one possible pronunciation. Learners cannot guess correctly, and many of the ambiguities split by gender: the same letters are said one way to a man and another way to a woman.
That is why baba writes every Hebrew line with vowel marks and a transliteration, and why the marks fade word by word as you master them, rather than staying forever or disappearing all at once.
| Hebrew | Said to or by a man | Said to or by a woman |
|---|---|---|
| מה שלומך | ma shlomkha | ma shlomekh |
| אני רוצה | ani rotse | ani rotsa |
| בשבילך | bishvilkha | bishvilekh |
| אמרת | amarta | amart |
| שלך | shelkha | shelakh |
Where You Get This in baba
baba Tutor, in development, has a pronunciation well: type any Hebrew word, see it with vowel marks and its sounds, hear it, record yourself, and save it. During a lesson, a pronunciation mark on your own sentence opens the same tool for the word that needs work.
Available today: Daily Situations in baba Pro+ sends a real Hebrew situation each day and gives pronunciation with every correction, and the web voice tutor speaks every line out loud so you can copy it and ask for it slower.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is there an app that checks my Hebrew pronunciation?
baba scores Hebrew pronunciation sound by sound, in baba Tutor, which is in development. Most pronunciation services, including the biggest ones, do not support Hebrew at all.
Which Hebrew sounds are hardest for English speakers?
The throat sounds ח, ע and the Israeli ר, plus stress placement, which usually falls on the last syllable in Hebrew and on the first in English.
Does stress really change the meaning in Hebrew?
Yes. Identical letters with different stress can be two different words, which is why a pronunciation check has to look at stress and not only at sounds.
Do I need vowel marks to pronounce Hebrew correctly?
While you are learning, yes. Ordinary Hebrew is unpointed and many words have more than one possible reading, so baba shows vowel marks and lets them fade word by word as you master them.
Can I practise pronunciation without a full lesson?
Yes. baba Tutor has a pronunciation well you can open on its own: look up a word, hear it, record yourself, and save it for later.
What baba Does Not Do
- baba Tutor has not launched, so the pronunciation well and in-lesson scoring are not yet public.
- Pronunciation scoring is software, not an Israeli. It flags what sounded wrong, and a teacher will always hear more.
- baba does not teach any language other than Hebrew.