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Dialect Guide - American Dialects

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.

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.

 

  • 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:

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 

 

"IPA Chart, available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike 3.0 Unported License. Copyright © 2018 International Phonetic Association."