A celebration of Librivox accents..

delibab · Post by **delibab** » August 4th, 2009, 8:18 am

There has been (well, still is ) lots of discussion in various places on the forum in regard to 'accents'. (and I would like to point out - personally speaking I do not have an accent, it's all the rest of you that do!

I was thinking might we be able to take advantage of this wonderful 'accent resource' we have, to celebrate all the rich audible colours (or should that be colors ) available within the community.
We could record a text (hmm, but what text ) in a vast range of accents, those that want to can put a label to those accents, and make this 'accent database' available to the world in glorious public domain Technicolor!
It may be very useful to other projects like Voxforge, same known text in 'x' different accents. Allowing them to fine tune the voice recognition software.
If I recall well, a few years back the BBC ran a project for a while collecting examples of many of the UK's different accents. We could do a 'somewhat similar' sort of thing.
Perhaps I'm 'going off on one' here. But - just thought I would ask.
Regards - DB

Cori · Post by **Cori** » August 4th, 2009, 10:31 am

I think that's a great idea. I was thinking about doing the reverse, which is way more silly ... (of having an "accent of the month" poem, that everyone works on the same text, and tries to perfect their English or Brooklyn or whatever accents, and mebbe a native-accented speaker could co-BC and critique.)

Indeed, what text? I'd suggest not a poem, because we already do this to some extent with the weekly poetry.

ExEmGe · Post by **ExEmGe** » August 4th, 2009, 11:41 am

Perhaps a (very) short story or article. Gutenberg has, under author 'Various', lots of old volumes of 'Punch' and 'The Wit and Humor of America'.
There must be something in that lot!

kayray · Post by **kayray** » August 4th, 2009, 12:02 pm

I like both ideas! I would contribute my "Southern California with midwestern parents" accent, and the accent of the month project would be a RIOT.

Cori · Post by **Cori** » August 4th, 2009, 12:03 pm

Or alternatively, if we could find something that was printed about LibriVox, and also in the public domain..? Michael Erard wrote a nice article, (okay, a while ago now!) perhaps he might give permission to de-copyright it..?

delibab · Post by **delibab** » August 4th, 2009, 12:25 pm

Cori,
Oh - might there just be a seed for a wacky future podcast..?

Regards from a thundery (in the distance) Hungary - DB

icyjumbo · Post by **icyjumbo** » August 4th, 2009, 1:46 pm

When I was researching accents for something I was reading for another site (

) I came across IDEA, which uses a combination of a standard text and free speech.

IDEA wrote:The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages, Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage), and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings), may be accessed from the menu bar to your right.

That seems like a reasonable way to approach this projectette.

DeRamos · Post by **DeRamos** » August 4th, 2009, 2:04 pm

This is fantastic! I would absolutely love to participate in an accent of the month poem/short reading. The (co-)BC could provide an accent test file (like the newbie test file) to provide some specific regional tonal guidance, since after all, there is a difference between Tennessee Sour Mash and Kentucky Bourbon.

...wait, we're talking about accents, right?

Post by **annise** » August 4th, 2009, 2:15 pm

What if we scripted some sort of corny thing like "Hi , My forum name is ...... and I live in ........ . I was born in ......... My mother tongue is ...... and
I also speak ......... which I learned ...... . I love recording for Librivox. One of my favourite listens is ....."

Very very rough draft idea - but it would be informative and maybe better than lots of versions of the same thing
Anne

delibab · Post by **delibab** » August 4th, 2009, 10:09 pm

Is there an audible equivalent of ‘the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog’ (a short text sentence containing all the letters of the English alphabet) – something that would exercise all the major ‘sounds’ in English..?
Regards - DB

RuthieG · Post by **RuthieG** » August 5th, 2009, 2:37 am

Stav's post in the old Lear "Book of Nonsense" thread set me thinking whether this would be the perfect thing for your idea, delibab.

Ruth

delibab · Post by **delibab** » August 5th, 2009, 9:05 am

Ruth, I think the Lear text could be an excellent suggestion for Cori's 'reverse idea' (everyone tries to do one accent). That I imagine will be a bundle of fun - everyone trying to do a New Jersey accent, or whatever!

What I was thinking of is more like - get as many people as possible to record a standard (same) text. The choice of text is the tricky bit, we need something that exercises all the 'sounds' made in English. Following Icyjumbo's suggestion, I have emailed the folks at the IDEA project (Univ. of Kansas) to see if they have any text suggestions that are well and truely in the PD. (the texts listed on their site do not appear to be in the public domain, and anyhow we may prefer something a little shorter).
Regards - DB

kayray · Post by **kayray** » August 5th, 2009, 9:13 am

I'm absolutely fascinated by accent & dialect (y'all know the difference, right? See footnote. ;-) but I can't "do" any, though I long to try. I will be first in line when the Cori project starts up if there's a master version we can try to imitate!

Footnote: A dialect is usually spoken by people who live in a certain region of a country. Those people speak their mother tongue in their own individual way. For example, many Scottish people have a dialect.
An accent usually describes the way people pronounce words of a language that is different from their mother tongue. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English with an Austrian accent.

Post by **Availle** » August 5th, 2009, 11:50 pm

kayray wrote:Footnote: A dialect is usually spoken by people who live in a certain region of a country. Those people speak their mother tongue in their own individual way. For example, many Scottish people have a dialect.
An accent usually describes the way people pronounce words of a language that is different from their mother tongue. For example, Arnold Schwarzenegger speaks English with an Austrian accent.

Finally somebody "in the know"... So often I haven been accused of an Austrian accent in my German...

However, just to complete your footnote, I'd like to let you know that Arnold speaks Austrian with an American accent.

If I'll ever get that bad at my mother tongue, I hope somebody will just shoot me...

aravis · Post by **aravis** » August 6th, 2009, 3:00 am

Availle wrote:...Finally somebody "in the know"... So often I haven been accused of an Austrian accent in my German...

Same here!

However, just to complete your footnote, I'd like to let you know that Arnold speaks Austrian with an American accent.

...and in addition he has a very strong regional dialect in his Austrian!

Elli