Listening with a Critical Ear Part 2
Posted by: Mary Burkey
Evaluating audiobooks? Be sure to check out part one for pronunciation guides as well!
Here are some great resources if you want to check the authenticity of an accent or dialect. The phenomenal Speech Accent Archive from George Mason University’s Program in Linguistics is the first stop to tune your ear to the cadence of speech from any area around the world. You must give it a try! Just click on the world map in the link above and listen to a native speaker. Or you may search by language, and then choose a voice. For instance, when I searched for Afrikaans, I found the selections below:
afrikaans1, female, Virginia, South Africa
afrikaans2, male, Pretoria, South Africa
afrikaans3, male, Pretoria, Transvaal, South Africa
There is also the International Dialects of English website, a project of Paul Meier, a leading dialect coach for theater and film. Or for audiobooks set in the UK, try the British Sound Library collection of the dialects and accents of England and Wales.
And to check pronunciation of English (and many foreign words), I like the online dictionary from Merriam-Webster, where you can click & hear the word spoken.
If you aren’t quite sure what accents and dialects are, take a look at this video from VoiceCasting that focuses on voice-acting for advertising.
April 15th, 2009 at 9:16 pm
[...] to another look at evaluating audiobooks. In Part One & Part Two of Listening with a Critical Ear, I focused on the skills of the narrator. Today’s spotlight [...]
January 8th, 2010 at 5:15 pm
[...] Listening with a Critical Ear pt. 2 [...]