Library : Drama: Voice, Accents, and Dialects

Books about Voice, Accents, and Dialects

Here are just a few examples of books we have about voice, accents, and dialects:

Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen by Paul Meier
Call Number: PE1711 .M45 2012 - Stacks (3rd Floor)

ISBN: 9780615461502

Publication Date: 2012

Standard on accents and dialects of the English language. Accompanied by collection of 12 CDs. Includes 24 of the most valuable accents and dialects for actors: Afrikaans (South Africa), American Deep South (Mississippi/Georgia/Alabama), American Southern (Kentucky/Tennessee), Australian, Cockney, Downeast New England, French, General American, German, Hampshire, Indian, Irish, Italian, Liverpool, New York, Northern Ireland, Russian, Scottish, South Boston, Spanish (Castilian & Colonial), Standard British English (Received Pronunciation), Welsh, Yiddish, and Yorkshire.
Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, 3rd Edition by John Wells
Call Number: Ref. PE1137 .W45 2008 - Drama History & Performance, Browsery (2nd Floor)

ISBN: 1405881186

Publication Date: 2008

Includes 135,000 pronunciations of words in both British and American English, over 200 graphs showing pronunciation preferences of British and American speakers, stress patterns for thousands of compounds and idioms, and how to pronounce thousands of proper names in the language of origin as well as English.
Voice: Onstage and Off by Robert Barton; Rocco dal Vera
Call Number: PN4162 .B27 2017 - Stacks (3rd Floor)

ISBN: 9781138918573

Publication Date: 2017

A comprehensive guide to the process of building, mastering, and fine-tuning the voice for performance. Covers the initial speech impulse and the creation of sound, right through to refining the final product in different types of performance.
Voice Made Visible: Multi-Octave Voice Training and Techniques for Performers by Rafael Lopez-Barrantes
Call Number: PN4162 .L66 2024

ISBN: 9781032451794

Publication Date: 2023

An exploration of voice training and performance practice based on the use and application of Multi-Octave Vocal Range techniques.

Open Access Audio Archives for Accents & Dialects

Accents & Dialects: British Library
Collections of audio recordings from the British Library. Includes the Evolving English WordBank, which captures English dialect and slang worldwide; the Evolving English VoiceBank, which includes contemporary English accents worldwide; the Survey of English Dialects, which features dialects from 313 localities across England (1950-1961); and the Millennium Memory Bank, which contains oral histories of British citizens from various parts of England, aged 5 to 107 years old.
IDEA: International Dialects of English Archive
Primary-source recordings of English-language dialects and accents. Roughly 1,400 samples from 120 countries and territories. IDEA’s recordings are principally in English, are of native speakers, and include both English-language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. (Many include brief demonstrations of the speaker’s native language, too.)
The Speech Accent Archive
From George Mason University, the speech accent archive presents a large set of speech samples from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English read the same paragraph and are carefully transcribed.