This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by dion.
Original Post: Speech Accent Archive: Hear a ton of accents
Feed Title: techno.blog(Dion)
Feed URL: http://feeds.feedburner.com/dion
Feed Description: blogging about life the universe and everything tech
I love accents. I think it would be cool to be able to put one on at any time (just to play with people).
This may be due to the fact that I am a Brit living in the US (and my accent is fading... which is why I need to keep taking trips back home!).
The speech accent archive is a research project from George Mason University, and it allows you to play 351 speech samples of men and women from all over the world. So cool :)
Our Mission
Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person's linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker.
The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different english speakers. It allows users to compare the demographic and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers in order to determine which variables are key predictors of each accent. The speech accent archive demonstrates that accents are systematic rather than merely mistaken speech.
All of the linguistic analyses of the accents are available for public scrutiny. We welcome comments on the accuracy of our transcriptions and analyses.
Previous Topic
