I have just found Sounds Familiar?, a fantastic website and have spent much time playing with it. It reminds me of the George Mason University Speech Accent Archive.
The site contains numerous recordings from the British Library of regional accents and dialects from every corner of the UK–some recorded as far back as the 1950s and many recent recordings up until 1999. There is a section on phonological, grammatical, social, and lexical variation: this means you can pick a region on the map and hear and learn about how a given pattern of speech developed, or how it fits with the language spoken in the rest of the UK. You can submit to the database and analyze your own accent, if you are British. You can spend hours clicking on the map of the UK to hear how words are pronounced across the region and how dialects change over time and space. Apparently, there are more than 150 audio clips of Geordie – the dialect of Newcastle-upon-Tyne – arguably one of the most recognizable dialects in Britain. You may want to hear how ethic minorities pronounce British English (check out the sound files for Asian English Phonology), or practice your Received Pronunciation, if you are feeling proper.
It is an interactive site allowing you to investigate how the language changes and progresses over time, using learning modules suited to college or high school students. In fact, the entire site is nested in the website of the British Library, and if you venture into the rest of the site, you’ll find all kinds of treasures.
The Sounds Familiar site is fairly new, hence this Guardian story about it.
The article ends with this passage:
Language evolves for many reasons – even something as superficial as the hegemony of supermarkets, as any Midlander trying to buy a pikelet will tell you. In Sainsbury’s it’s a crumpet or nothing. But change is not something to be judged or mourned; it’s something to be observed and understood. The purpose of the website is to document the history of language – with schools and universities invited to become part of the process by sending in their own regional recordings. As Upton says, “We’re not in the business of preservation. The only language that doesn’t change at all is a dead one.”
I know that there are some for whom this is not a self evident truth and in fact this statement invites controversy. But for those of us who accept it, I think it has implications for how we teach, communicate, and think about pedagogy, especially in a universe as diverse as CUNY and Gotham. Doesn’t it?
And for dessert, and since we are talking about accents, check out this truly bizarre, yet funny, (?) clip:
Um. Yeah. . . Not so sure what to say about that video. I suppose you need to know Danish to be in on the joke. It did remind me, if vaguely, of this Berlitz commercial:
The British project is fascinating. The Danish spoof reminded me of my time in Denmark in 1996 forabout 6 months. Though Danes did seems to be able to communicate perfectly well with one antoher, the language was extremely difficult — Copenhagen is pronounced, for instance, roughly as “kubn-hadn”. I won’t even attempt to reproduce the sound of “Kierkegaard.” And though I’m a bit embarrassed to admit it, I actually dropped my Danish class after about a week because even in 1996 everyone in the country knew English pretty fluently. I took a film class instead. True to form as a lazy Ameriacn I guess. Hi hi (goodbye in Danish).