George Mason University Speech Accent Archive

JT Olds writes "Apparently George Mason University is running a project to document differences in speech and accents from different backgrounds and the like. They have a paragraph that 306 sample readers have read and recorded, and all of these sound files are categorized by background, gender, age, and other things. They say that this is primarily for teaching and learning, and is especially useful for any linguists out there, but I just thought it was cool. The sound bytes are released under the Creative Commons license. Of course, the Google cache of the main frame is here. As a side note, I did get the link to this from Penny Arcade's Jerry Holkins."

IRC; afternet; #gamedev

[after]

We were just talking about how the British English language was the true "natural" English language, all other derived languages that were English with an accent. For example, If I (a person who lives in America and speaks US English; no born American (thank goodness)) were to go to England and converse with an Englishman; who would have the accent, me or him? The obvious answer, as a lot of Americans fail to realize, is me.

Hmmmmm

[ziggy_zero]

When I found this site a few days ago (linked on Penny Arcade), one of the first things that came to mind was how useful it could be to an actor who has to learn how to do a certain accent. In some of the more common accents they even have a list of rules on how most speakers of that other language speak (e.g. many Japanese speakers reverse their R's and L's).

Re:IRC; afternet; #gamedev

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Yes but why is British english considered the true english? because England is the most important country in the world, or because english originates from there?

If you think it's the former, then since Britain isn't the great empire she once was, and is only just a regular country these days, then you could consider US english as being the "root" english language.

If you think it's the latter, then one could also consider than english, which is a normand anglo-saxon tongue, originated either from Saxony (in Germany) or Normandy (in France) and therefore is itself an accented version of these languages.

What I'm saying is, every language is the derivate of something else, it all depends on your point of view. And what's more, within the UK and the US, there are great variations of accents, so I'm not sure it means anything to say "british english is true english".

Perhaps if someone could come up with a "reasonable average" of the lingo, then that would be the true english...

Actually...

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the correct answer is both. Everyone has an accent. An accent is the part of speech which is neither specific to an individual or to the language. It varies by region, background, or time period. If you were to go back to the Old English days (there is no "single" English language as it has evolved over time) it is unlikely that anyone would understand you. The same for the Brits.

Maybe the question you meant was which is closer to "correct". If you consider correct to be closer to the root of the evolutionary language tree then the Brittish are probably closer since the Americans' language changed more quickly since the split.

Re:Very curious methodology

[mocm]

I don't know about local Dutch accents, but I can recognize various German accents even when the people are speaking English. I can also recognize most other European language speakers when they are speaking English, although it gets a little harder when the languages are similar and I don't speak them myself. But I guess as soon as you speak a language yourself and can recognize diffenernt dialects in that language, you will also be able to recognize them when the people speak a foreign language.
If you ever listend to Gaelic or Welsh you can also see where the English accent of those people come from even if they don't speak the original language anymore.

Re:Japanese people can't pronounce L!!

[Senjutsu]

Japanese people don't REVERSE L and R, they just can't pronounce L at all.

This is not particularly correct. Japanese has neither an R nor an L; it has a sound that stands somewhere roughly between the two (whether or not it sounds more like an R or an L depends on the exact speaker, their particular regional accent, and to a certain extent, their gender). And while Japanese speakers of English do not always or even consistently reverse the two consonants, as a consequence of growing up in an environment where the two sounds were conflated, they often have trouble distinguishing the two and have trouble remembering which tongue positioning they should be using for a particular word. Hence it is not uncommon to hear a native Japanese speaker produce an R instead of an L, or vice-versa, in English.

If you want proof of this, just look on any Japanese Katakana or Hirigana chart. These contain all the phonetic sounds in the Japanese language. notice there is no L.

That proves nothing, as Katakana and Hiragana charts contain neither Rs nor Ls; they contain, by definition, Katakana and Hiragana. On an English translation (and the key word here is "translation", as in close approximation of the sounds in english) of the (ra ri ru re ro) portion of the charts they are often presented as R sounds (as this is what they tend to sound like, especially when produced by male speakers in the standard accent), but it is not truly an R (or L sound), as the tounge is at a different position with respect to the upper teeth, and it shares elements in common with the R, L (and to a certain extent D) sounds.

Re:IRC; afternet; #gamedev

[DietVanillaPepsi]

But then again, there are many different British accents. And British English is a evolved version of Old English. So none of us are speaking true and natural English. Such is the nature of language and progress.

Re:IRC; afternet; #gamedev

[Anonymous Coward]

That's not right: The three pieces of land around england that you're talking about might well not be able to survive on their own, but obviously enough, Northern Ireland could economically survive very well if reunified with Southern Ireland, independent of England (though a fair bit of the population would object to such a reunification with Ireland proper at the moment)

And remember that racially, the Scots and the Irish are pretty much the same people. What if they got over their bickering? A unified Irish-Scots nation like there was until about the 10th century would not only be perfectly capable of surviving independently, it would pretty seriously freak out the English, as there is very little love indeed between the Southern Irish and the English for pretty obvious reasons (millions dead in a famine caused by foreign invaders tends to piss the survivors off...)

The Welsh and Breton, while Celtic, are from a different branch of the celtic family tree, and might be a bit less enthusiastic about unifying with the Irish And Scots, but it's not at all inconceivable.

Imagine Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales ceding from the United Kingdom of Britannia and joining a reuinified Celtic nation ruled from Hibernia. That WOULD, most certainly, not only be self-sufficient, it would also be a force to be reckoned with - the famine killed off our weakest first, and evolution works. Remember that we Celts have very long memories.

Re:Actually...

[tverbeek]

I thought it was the language in the satellite countries that changed the least. And the language in the original country that changed and evolved the most.

One thing that has pushed the evolution of American English (more so than British) is the ongoing influx of non-native speakers adopting it. Britain has had immigrants of its own since the American colonies were created, to be sure, but particularly since that nasty split with the British, American English has been spoken more by former Africans, Germans, French, Chinese, Norwegians, Poles, Mexicans, Dutch, Koreans, Arabs, etc. than by former Britons. That had to affect its pronunciation (and might explain some of the regional variations, depending on which immigrants settled where).

Re:IRC; afternet; #gamedev

[UnknowingFool]

Interesting point. I always thought that American English was not per se "truer" but had fewer pronounced variations in a given area than British English.

Of course that's not to say that American English doesn't have variations (Southern drawl, New England, Bronx, etc), but I think there's less variation in all of Texas than there is in the city of London.

Part of this is that the US is younger and part of it is that the US grew up in a time of mass communication. Although variations have appeared, with recorded media, at least people know that they exist. Otherwise isolation from different regions would have made the phonetic variations more pronounced and widespread.

Chinese has many dialects due to it's several thousand years of existence, and they don't sound anything alike. Chinese people can't talk to other Chinese person if they don't speak the same dialect. Whereas Spanish and Italians can converse with a bit of work because most of the phonetics and grammar are still the same.