Learn English Sounds
Making English pronunciation practice actually fun.
A Next.js platform that turns traditional language learning upside down. Instead of boring drills, users practice with interactive sound recognition exercises, IPA-backed phoneme breakdowns, and minimal-pair drills. It helps learners who struggle with specific English sounds.
The problem
Spanish speakers learning English struggle with pronunciation. Most existing tools are paywalled, ad-heavy, or grammar-focused rather than sound-focused. Few are scientifically accurate (IPA-backed) and ad-free, and almost none ship in multiple languages with full content parity.
The approach
A Next.js 15 site that teaches the 44 English phonemes through IPA, native audio examples, minimal-pair drills, and drag-drop games. The App Router uses a [lang] dynamic segment and centralizes sound data in app/data/sounds/. A build-time script generates 50+ pronunciation-rule blog posts in five languages from a single source. Deployed to Cloudflare Workers via OpenNext, with force-static plus middleware to keep CPU under budget.
Notable decisions
- i18n-first architecture. Every route under [lang]/, metadata parametrized per language. No retrofitting later.
- Single sound database. app/data/sounds/ is the source of truth; pages filter from it. Adding a sound propagates across the site.
- Bilingual content parity. Each blog post is generated in five languages at build time, so users never land on an incomplete page.
- IPA and minimal-pair pedagogy. Each sound has its IPA symbol, native audio, example words, and drills. Grammar-agnostic, suitable for any learner.
Status
Live at learnenglishsounds.com, free and ad-free. Recent work on 50 new pronunciation-rule posts in five languages, performance refactoring, and CSP policy adjustments.
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