Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Online database of English accents worldwide
Fascinating....but it still has its gaps. Many years ago I remember being completely fascinated by a BBC documentary which included stories of a couple of islands off the eastern seaboard of the USA. The islands had, apparently, remained isolated enough for each to retain pure english accents; one form Norfolk and one from the wets country. I haven't been able to track them down since.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by CarlyM on
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Might I also recommend the British Library archive: http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/ for British accents and dialects (including some super old recordings)...
....and this US-based one where speakers from all over the world have submitted recordings of the same text: http://accent.gmu.edu/browse.php
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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My Ganny (Granny) spoke Sunderland dialect. Not an accent, but almost language. Even in a town as relatively small as Sunderland there were variations between what was spoken on the north of the Wear and the south. There is a tiny part of town called Southwick (pronounced Suddick) where they spoke in a dialect that people in the rest of the town found hard to understand.
Sadly its almost dissapeared but you still hear the occassional older person say things like "If yeh an ye marra's gaan the shops, yus gaan the ranglang way" or "Mine fee yeh knackit man".
There's a story my mam told me about the working man's club she and my dad used to go to in the 60's. A southern comedian was bombing on stage and said "All the women here start every sentance with "Eee"". A woman turned to my mam and said "Eee, we dinnat"
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Permalink Reply by Birdy_Too on
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Dialects fascinate me, but they are dying unfortunately due to travel and media, a couple of miles in any district can be noticeable.
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Permalink Reply by StephenBln on
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I always understood that Tottenham (North London) people always said 'watcha'.. when greeting someone... i.e. Watcha cock.. which could always be heard on Tottenham High Road in my childhood..
Sarf London people on the other hand, always said 'alright' when greeting someone..
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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I saw a BBC4 programme about accents/dialects a while back by a woman whose job it was to teach actors to get regional accents right. She was working on a project trying to identify the origins of recorded WW1 soldiers, which was what the programme was mainly about.
She claimed the typography of the land and its climate influenced the accent. Thus, areas with hills and valleys had up and down intonation, flat areas had flat intonation and people from ports tended to talk as though their noses were blocked (think Liverpool). Try it, visualise the area and match your voice to it...
More depressingly, she identified that the closer a place was to a big metropolis, the more likely that young people in the area would have the accent of the big city rather than of their native town. The example they used was the famous Macclesfield accent which is losing ground to the ubiquitous and fashionable Mancunian.
My own Suffolk accent has long gone but I still use dialect words sometimes, only I don't realise they are Suffolk dialect until I see the blank looks on the faces of other people! We are the great mumblers of Britain.
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