1,300 ways to say the same thing

[Francis Hult]

The Guardian

 

1,300 ways to say the same thing

 

The archive was set up to exhibit "a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds". Native and non-native English speakers are recorded - or record themselves - reading the passage, chosen because it contains most of the consonants, vowels and clusters of Standard American English. These recordings make up the archive.

 

Steven H Weinberger, associate professor and director of linguistics at the university, is the administrator of the archive, which has been on the web since 1999. Anyone can submit a sample. "We get them all of the time, from people all over the globe," he says. 

 

"We simply ask for CD-quality recordings, and we get some very good recordings. We also get noisy, badly recorded ones, which we discard. If the recording is good, and the data are confirmed, we accept it and add it to the archive."

 

Full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/jun/01/english-accents-research

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