On-line survey of British speech; and PBS series "Do you speak American?"

[Harold F. Schiffman]

Here are a couple of websites that look at different varieties of English.
One is a BBC site:  http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/ where you are asked to
help create a "build a picture of the words we use across the British
Isles."  This is quite a departure from the old-style BBC, which only had
announcers using 'RP' style English.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/yourvoice/accent2.shtml

Secondly, the PBS series "Do you speak American?" with its website at
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/

This series has been widely criticized for not being very scholarly or
scientific, and perpetuating old stereotypes, but still there are
interesting things to see and hear on it.

HS