DIALECTS OF ENGLISH

Once again a post from David Crystal's blog leads me to an interesting Internet resource. This time I will comment on International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA), an online archive of dialect and accent recordings for the performing arts created by Paul Meier, author of Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen.

This website contains a well structured bank of recordings by speakers of English from around the world. Each of them reads out a short passage provided by the organisers and, after that, the participants add some free speech, usually talking about their experience as English learners and their countries, which is transcripted.