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Forums => English & Linguistics => Topic started by: Noemon on January 14, 2005, 07:36:27 AM

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Noemon on January 14, 2005, 07:36:27 AM

I found a link on Intelligence3's website to the Speech Accent Archive (http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/), and couldn't get over here to share it fast enough.  Look!  Look!  It's incredibly cool!

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Noemon on January 14, 2005, 07:38:01 AM

This (http://alpha.furman.edu/~mmenzer/gvs/dialogue.htm) site looks pretty cool too.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Jonathon on January 14, 2005, 08:03:37 AM

Cool links, Noemon. Thanks!

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Zalmoxis on January 14, 2005, 11:27:49 AM

That's very cool.

I really need to develop a passable fake Romanian accent. That could totally come in handy some day.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Jonathon on January 14, 2005, 12:44:24 PM

I thought you learned Romanian on your mission.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Annie Subjunctive on January 14, 2005, 02:51:41 PM

They need more French dialects, methinks.  Anna - get thyself over there!

Strange they don't have a Parisian.  Get Choobak over there too.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: rivka on January 16, 2005, 02:07:03 PM

Those are great, Noem, thanks!

The most intriguing thing (although not at all surprising) about the first site is the degree of variation within each group. Some of it can be explained by looking at the background info (people who have spent at least a year in an English-speaking country will generally have picked up the consonant/vowel sounds absent from their native language, for instance), but much of it is just individual variation. (Due to different teachers, experiences, ease with learning languages? Probably all these and more.)

Fascinating!

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Jonathon on January 16, 2005, 07:33:47 PM

I just wish they had more IPA transcriptions.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Zalmoxis on January 18, 2005, 12:10:48 PM

JB:

I did. What I meant was that I need to develop the accent of a Romanian speaking English.

Me learning Romanian didn't really help with that.

It would be fun to try and pass myself off as a Romanian tourist in certain public places.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Jonathon on January 18, 2005, 01:50:36 PM

Okay, I see. It's one thing to learn a language, but it's another thing to speak your own language as if you're a native of another language.

Title: Speech Accent Archive
Post by: Annie Subjunctive on January 18, 2005, 02:06:28 PM

And a lot harder, I think.  I can't do a fake French-speaking-English accent to save my life, though I've been told by native speakers that my accent in French is very good.

I had a roommate who was a theater major and took an entire course on accents.  She brought home instructional tapes that she let me listen to while I drove a delivery van all day.  It was very fun.  I can do a pretty mean Irish, especially with contrived sentences like "A mother's love is unlike that of any other brother."