Accents of English

By Simon

A website I found today compares how people from many different regions and countries pronounce English words. It also gives the pronunciation of equivalent words in related languages, and in older forms of English and other Germanic languages. The pronunciations are all given in the IPA, and there are recordings of many of the modern words as well.

4 thoughts on “Accents of English”

  2. Does anyone know of anything like this for Spanish’ I´d love to find it

    (When I was in guatemala my teacher had me listen to recordings of people speaking Spanish and then tell him about the accent. they were really interesting like a Guatemalan who had grown up in New York and then gone back to G as an adult [basic G accent, with some caribean overtones from the Puerto Ricans in NY, with a slight anglo intonation pattern] or a Guatemalan who had grown up in Panama then moved back later[basically Panamanian, but with some of the more obvious features of G spanish] Etc. I got rather good at it by the end, and it was very helpful for me as I can now do the same with my own accent, which apparentely is “educated Colombian, Ecuadorian, Peruvian or Bolivian with a slight trace of central american. Go figure. he said if you pushed he´d say educated Ecuadorian. I don´t think I have even heard an Ecuadorian speak!)

  3. One of my favourite words is ORTHOEPY which is the study of the correct pronunciation of words. Accent has an impact on pronunciation, so it’s a sort-of relevant comment for this article. The reason I like this word so much is that my dictionary (shorter OED) gives two different pronunciations for it! If ever a word should have just one correct pronunciation, surely this is it.

  4. The North American section omits all the regional differences in Canada, notably Newfie, rural Ontarioan, and the hybrid French-English of New Brunswick.

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