North-East of England
June 4, 2007
I’ve brought you a present back from the North-East and it gave me an idea. I’m starting a new category called Regional Accents, in which I’ll try and collect, as you might have already guessed, regional accents of native speakers of English and French, in an effort to illustrate the richness, vibrancy and multiple personalities of these two languages. Let's start with the ramblings of a speaker from the North-East of England. I asked her to try and include words and phrases specific to her region as well as different pronounciations of words we’re all familiar with. I've highlighted a very rough area on the map below to show what I mean by "North-East".
You've taken on quite a task.
For the English ones you could save a bit of time by looking here:
http://www.collectbritain.co.uk/collections/dialects/
Has a similar thing been done in France?
Posted by Tony on June 4, 2007 3:29 PMI'm not planning on building an exhaustive library, I just like the idea of collecting different accents as I meet people from different areas. I'm a bit of a collector at heart, you see. And I thought it could amuse some of my readers.
Thanks for the great link Tony, here is another one: http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/
Posted by céline on June 4, 2007 3:34 PMI did my first degree in Durham so this takes me back! If I were nearer I could give you some authentic native marked RP.
Posted by James on June 4, 2007 11:12 PMI've always thought that ESL/EFL courses should include some exposure to regional accents, even if only a couple of token lessons.
Of course, teaching this kind of thing too early would probably only confuse students, but it always seemed to me that understanding only one variety (or at most two varieties) of English is incredibly boring and cheats students of one of the most fascinating aspects of language.
Posted by bathrobe on June 20, 2007 11:36 AMI agree bathrobe, some awareness of the various accents in which English is spoken is crucial, if not always practical.
Posted by céline on June 20, 2007 11:42 AMPrevious: June 1, 2007
Mystery castle >>
Next: June 6, 2007
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