Dialect Guide - American Dialects - Dialect Guide - American Dialects

Guide Information and Navigation

American dialects are numerous! This guide gives a general introduction to a sample variety of American dialects. On each page, there will be a description of the unique aspects of the dialect, sound clip examples, and suggestions to resources within the Point Park library specific to the dialect you want to emmulate.

Many of the descriptions of these dialects use linguistic jargon to describe the dialect, mostly from the The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). This is a very helpful and simple glossary to help you navigate.
http://dialectblog.com/glossary/

The sound clips found in this guide come from the sites listed below.

IDEA (International Dialects of English Archive)
- This website provides sound clips of languages and dialects across the world; this link will take you to a the United States of America page where sound clips are organized by state

Library of Congress - American Memory
- The Center for Applied linguistics Collection captured samples from 33 states and the District of Columbia and reorganized them into an interactive map

The Speech Accent Archive
- Each sound clip has a demographic description of the person speaking, as well as a phonetic description of how they are reading the script (sound clips require Apple QuickTime - Works best with Internet Explorer)

LibGuide originally created by Reference Associate, Kim Foflygen.

Performing a Dialect Library Resources

Resources available through Point Park library that can help you perform an accent:

Accents by Robert Blumenfeld
Call Number: PN2071.F6 B48 2002
ISBN: 9780879109677
This practical reference manual, with its precise, authentic instructions on how to speak in more than 100 dialects, has established itself as the most useful and comprehensive guide to accents available, now increased by a third in this revised printing. As before, the accents range from regional U.S. and British dialects to European accents that include, among others, the Germanic, Slavic and Romance Languages. Completing his around-the-world journey, the author then covers the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Includes two CDs.
Dialects for the Stage by Evangeline Machlin
Call Number: PN2071.F6 M3 2006
ISBN: 9780878302000
Dialect work is one of the actor's most challenging tasks. Need to know a Russian accent? Playing a German countess or a Midwestern farmhand? These and more accents - from Yiddish to French Canadian - are clearly explained in Evangeline Machlin's classic work. Now available in a book-and-CD format, Evangeline Machlin's Dialects for the Stage is based on a method of dialect acquisition she developed during her years working with students at Boston University's Division of Theatre. During her long career,Evangeline Machlin trained such actors as Steve McQueen, Lee Grant, Suzanne Pleshette, Joanne Woodward, and Faye Dunaway.
How to Do Accents by Edda Sharpe; Jan Haydn Rowles
Call Number: PN2071.F6 S53 2007
ISBN: 9781840026009
In this groundbreaking textbook, two of Britain's leading voice coaches set out a new way of learning how to do accents based on seeing, hearing, and feeling the way accents are put together. With the use of the accompanying CD, the reader is led through a step-by-step, simple but detailed process.
American Talk by Robert Hendrickson
Call Number: PE2841 .H38 1986
ISBN: 0670813303
An entertaining romp through some of the major and minor dialects of American English, from Haavaad to Honolulu, with lots of examples of unusual words and phrases. Pronunciations are also given, but the phonetic system used is not always clear. Hendrickson is not himself a linguist and has sometimes misunderstood his sources, or else been simply careless in transcribing his notes. Vaquero does not mean ``white man'' but ``cow man.'' If hillbillies say ``hurd'' for the past of hear , so does everyone else. He also perpetuates some hoary misconceptions, such as the ``reversal'' of the oi and er sounds in Brooklynese.
Speaking without an accent [sound recording] : non-regional American accent for speakers from Pennsylvania & Delmarva also southern New Jersey and eastern Ohio by Stern, David Alan
Dialect & Spoken Word Collection
Shelved Alphabetically by Title

2018 IPA Chart

This link will take you to the full 2018 version of the IPA Chart, from the International Phonetic Association website.

IPA Chart