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Overview

Welcome to the WAAPA Accent and Dialect Collection!

The WAAPA Accent and Dialect Collection is a free resource for theatre practitioners and researchers that offers over 380 examples of the English spoken word from 68 countries of origin.

Started in 1996 by then Lecturer Julia Moody, this ongoing project aims to build a comprehensive collection of audio files representing as many of the world’s renditions of the English language as possible. Most of the samples have an Australian-English base to reflect our Australian community, the project however, continues to strive to include representation of voices from all ethnocultural varieties of English, including Australian Indigenous voices.

We hope you find this collection useful for your theatre practice or research.


Audio collection - Listen to our audio samples from the following regions:

About the collection

The recordings in the WAAPA Accent and Dialect Collection were made under a range of conditions, with interviews taking place in lounge rooms, cafés and pubs, so the sound quality varies accordingly.

Interviewees were asked to read aloud a list of vowel sounds, and a number of sentences to demonstrate the vowel sounds in the context of speech. The list was chosen by the late Andrew Jack, an internationally regarded dialect coach, to represent the main vowel sounds found in the English language.

The examples also contain general conversation in English about the interviewee’s native country, personal stories of migration, anecdotes, jokes and sometimes a song or two.

We hope you find this site useful for your theatre practice or research.

Contact

This project is currently overseen by Luzita Fereday, a Senior Lecturer in Voice in the Acting (Performance) department at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

If you would like more information about the Accent and Dialect collection please feel free to contact us.

Lecturer
Mrs Luzita Fereday
Mobile: (61) 0432 896 354
Email: l.fereday@ecu.edu.au

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