Do We Really Talk Like This?

[gnomi]

(post title courtesy of mabfan)

From George Mason University, via languagehat, The Speech Accent Archive.

From the intro page:

The speech accent archive uniformly presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed. The archive is used by people who wish to compare and analyze the accents of different English speakers.

I saw a similar, but much smaller, database a couple of years ago, but I can't remember where. If I find it again, I'll post it.

Comments

[lisafeld.livejournal.com]

The old one was here too, http://accent.gmu.edu/. I think they've just massively improved on it.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

Ah! Thank you! I knew the paragraph of text the participants read was familiar, so I figured it had to be somewhat related.

[sorek.livejournal.com]

PBS had a show called Do you speak American? hosted by Robert MacNeil, formerly of the MacNeil/Lehrer report. I think that show referenced this archive or at least a very similar project.

[gnomi.livejournal.com]

I remember that show (and we have the book).

That may have been where I first found reference to the site.