The Year in Review

It’s been a great 2019 at IDEA!

Deepest thanks and congratulations to the following editors whose samples we published this year: Bryn Austin (13), Ben Corbett (12), Kris Danford (2), Tshari King (10), Tanera Marshall (8), Deric McNish (8), Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann (1), and Sarah Maria Nichols (2).

This year’s 69 new subjects boosts the archive to an amazing 1535 samples.

New samples cover the following regions: Anguilla, Antigua and Barbuda, Arkansas (U.S.), Australia, Azerbaijan, Beijing (China), Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, California (U.S.), Dominica, Egypt, England, Guyana, Honduras, Idaho (U.S.), Illinois (U.S.), Japan, Jiangsu, Kentucky (U.S.), Lebanon, Louisiana (U.S.), Massachusetts (U.S.), Michigan (U.S.), New York (U.S.), Pennsylvania (U.S.), Quebec (Canada), Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Scotland, South Korea, Sweden, Tennessee (U.S.), Trinidad, Texas (U.S.), and Wisconsin (U.S.).

Highlights of the past year:

• Congratulations again to Marco Sciascia, who earned his IPA certificate of proficiency.
• Kudos to Ben Corbett. In his first year at the University of Arkansas, he has instituted his Arkansas Accent and Dialect Project, seeking to record subjects from every county in the state. Does that give anyone else an idea?
• My monthly In a Manner of Speaking podcast, celebrating IDEA with its regular “Guess that Accent” quiz, has been growing in fans. It was great to have some editors among my guests: Rena Cook, Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann and Dylan Paul, Linda Nicholls-Gidley, and Cameron Meier. In 2020, I look forward to talking with Micha Espinosa, Karina Lemmer, and Ros Steen.
• We welcomed a new editor, Tshari King; and Tanera Marshall’s and Deric McNish’s outstanding contributions made them senior editors.
• Our newly designed Speech and Voice Disorders page is now much more user-friendly and comprehensive.
• We were thrilled to host a lunch for IDEA editors at the VASTA conference in Orlando, Florida, with a dozen IDEA editors able to join Cameron, who accepted, on my behalf, my Lifetime Distinguished Member award from VASTA President Michael Barnes. That was huge thrill for me and for Cameron, who enjoyed meeting so many of our editors, not to mention dozens of other VASTA members.
• Congratulations to Dylan Paul, our site designer, special consultant, and senior editor; he’s in the cast of Moulin Rouge on Broadway! Despite his success as an actor, his long-term primary career goal remains teaching and coaching, he tells me.

Lastly, thank to all of YOU who visited IDEA this year, supported us with monetary contributions, or simply cited IDEA in your own research and posts on social media. For the first time in our 21-year history, we started accepting a limited number of topic-appropriate sponsors this year, but we still rely mostly on visitors like YOU to keep this free site afloat. Please consider supporting us by visiting our Support IDEA and Sponsor IDEA pages to learn more about how you can be an important part of the archive.

Happy holidays to all, and best wishes for a great new year.

Paul Meier