Links and Resources

Dialect Resources

• Accent Help
• African Accents: A Workbook for Actors (audio samples of accompany 11 African accents and dialects)
• American Dialect Society
• American Languages (a UW-Madison project to document American linguistic diversity; visit their library of American dialects)
• Atlas of North American English
• Audio Eloquence (pronunciation, dialect and speech resources for audiobook narrators)
• BBC Voices project (1,200 recordings of British and Irish voices)
• British Library Accents and Dialects of the United Kingdom
• British Library Sounds (thousands of spoken-word recordings)
• Center for Applied Linguistics (interviews with subjects in most US states and territories, and two Canadian provinces)
• Detroit Historical Museum (voices from Detroit, Michigan, United States)
• Dialect Resource (dialect tapes by Gillian Lane-Plescia)
• Dialectology at Leeds (information on the Survey of English Dialects)
• Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE)
• Dynamic Dialects (an accent database, containing an articulatory video-based corpus of speech samples)
• Macquarie University’s Australian Voices (research site devoted to Australian dialects, accents, and linguistics)
• National Map of the Regional Dialects of American English (by the University of Pennsylvania)
• North Carolina Language and Life Project
• Paul Meier Dialect Services
• Scots language — a guide
• Speech Accent Archive (foreign-language speakers reading the same English text)
• Stoller System (dialect coaching and design by Amy Stoller)
• Telsur Project (a phonological atlas of North America)
• Vincent Voice Library (many thousands of voice recordings of people both famous and obscure; many playable online)
• Visual Accent and Dialect Archive (video archive of English-language accents and dialects from around the world)
• Voices of Oklahoma (a site devoted to preserving the oral history of Oklahoma)
• Voices of the UK (a project of the British Library, a research tool for finding specific online UK dialect recordings)
• Yorkshire Dialect Verse (native Yorkshire poets reading their compositions in dialect)

Drama Schools, Acting Training, and Casting Help

• Acting in London (list of top British drama schools)
• Association for Theatre in Higher Education (theatre departments in U.S. universities)
• Michael Howard Studios (an acting studio for film, TV, and theatre)
• Run Lines with Me (an iOS app designed to help actors at all levels memorize lines)
• Sound & Fury Casting

Film Resources

• Film Comment Magazine
• Internet Movie Database
• MeierMovies (a one-stop shop for all things related to movies and film history, by IDEA Executive Editor Cameron Meier)
• PrimeTime Reels (your go-to editor for performance clips and reels)

Languages/Linguistics

• American Voices (a unique site devoted to comprehension of native English-language speakers)
• Babel Fish Translation (Translate a block of text from any language into any other.)
• In Search of the First Language (a PBS Nova TV program transcript)
• Linguistic Society of America
• Macquarie Dictionary (an Australian dictionary and thesaurus)
• Sona Software (Russian grammar)
• The Spread of the English Language: World Map Timelapse (a video by IvyPanda showing the geographic and historic spread of English, from the pre-English of the Sixth Century to today)

Pronunciation Dictionaries and Resources

• Forvo (Look up any word in any language and hear it pronounced by a native speaker.)
• The Free Dictionary (provides a recording of each word, pronounced in American English)
• J.C. Wells, Longman Pronunciation Dictionary, London, Longman, 1990. (provides both American and British English pronunciations of over 40,000 words, in IPA)
• Kenyon, John S., and Thomas A. Knott, A Pronouncing Dictionary of American English, Merriam, 1944. (revised and updated; provides pronunciation in IPA)
• Namecoach (Make a recording of your name and embed that recording in your e-mail signature or social-media account.)

Recording Software

• Audacity (a free, open-source, easy-to-use program that let’s you record and edit sound files in a variety of formats including mp3; be sure to also install LAME, essential if you are also making mp3 files)
• WavePad (a free, open source, easy-to-use program that let’s you record and edit sound files in a variety of formats including mp3)

Rhetoric

• Silva Rhetoricae (The Forest of Rhetoric; a glossary of rhetorical terms and figures, compiled by Professor Gideon Burton)

Shakespeare

• LitCharts: The Bard’s Lexicon (words coined by Shakespeare) and other Shakespeare vocabulary resources
• Open Source Shakespeare (an experiment in literary technology)
• Shakespeare’s Complete Works online
• Shakespeare Pronunciation (an  iOS and Android app, by Shane-Ann Younts and Louis Scheeder, to guide your pronunciation of over 5,000 words in the canon)
• Shakespeare’s Words (David and Ben Crystal’s unsurpassed resource; providing the full text of the plays and poems, a searchable glossary integrated with the text, lists of characters, plot synopses, graphic representation of the characters’ relationships in each play, and more)
• Ultimate Shakespeare Resource Guide (a summary of some of the best Shakespeare resources online)
• Voicing Shakespeare, an eBook with embedded sound and video, by Paul Meier, IDEA’s founder and director

Singing

• Vocal Process (Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher)

Theatre Associations

• American Association of Community Theatre (AACT)
• Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE)

Voice, Speech, and Phonetics Sites

• Fitzmaurice Voicework
• Interactive IPA (an iOS app from Paul Meier, IDEA’s founder and director)
• Interactive IPA (an Android app from Paul Meier, IDEA’s founder and director)
• International Phonetic Alphabet  (an interactive online demonstration)
• International Phonetic Association
• IPA Handbook
• IPA Keyboard (no download required; allows you to create phonetic unicode text, which you may then simply cut and paste into your own document)
• Kristin Linklater (Linklater Voice)
• Knight/Thompson Speechwork
• Patrick Fraley’s Complete Book of Voiceover Exercises
• Physclips (multimedia introduction to the basic operation of the human voice)
• Rising Stars Reading Planet: Phonics Guide (an introduction to phonics for parents, children, and schools)
• SAMPA Computer readable phonetic alphabet
• Seeing Speech (speech articulation)
• Shane Ann Younts (a leading instructor of voice and speech, based in New York City)
• SIL International (phonetic fonts and more)
• Society of Voice Arts & Sciences (SOVAS: providing education, training, and job opportunities to voice actors)
• Speech and Voice Disorder links catalogued on IDEA
• University of Iowa Phonetics (great animated graphics of the speech tract in action)
• VASTA (Voice and Speech Trainers Association)
• VASTA Professional Index
• VASTA links (a great list of voice/accent/language resources provided by VASTA)
• Voice + Speech (website by IDEA Senior Editor Eric Armstrong)
• VORG, The Voice Over Resource Guide (the industry’s oldest and most definitive voice-over publication)

Suggested Reading

Ayan, Erdal. Teaching Pronunciation: A Critical Approach. Karadeniz Technical University, 2008.
Barton, Robert, with Rocco Dal Vera. Voice: Onstage And Off. Harcourt Brace, 1995.
Blunt, Jerry. Stage Dialects. Dramatic Publishing, 1984.
Gimson, A.C. An Introduction to the Pronunciation of English. Edward Arnold, London, 1964.
Herman, Lewis. Foreign Dialects: A Manual for Actors, Directors and Writers. Routledge, 1997.
Hughes, Arthur, and Peter Trudgill. English Accents and Dialects, 3rd. ed. London: Edward Arnold, 1983.
Kur, Barry. Stage Dialect Studies. Available through the author: 609 West Fairmount Ave., State College, PA 16801.
Lane-Plescia, Gillian. Dialects and Accents for Actors. 66 Mathewson Mill Rd., Preston, CT 06365. www.dialectresource.com.
Machlin, Evangeline. Dialects for the Stage. New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1975.
Meier, Paul. Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen. Paul Meier Dialect Services, 4316 Wimbledon Drive, Lawrence, KS 66047, USA. www.paulmeier.com.
Molin, Donald H. Actor's Encyclopedia of Dialects, 2nd ed. New York: Sterling Publishers, 1991.
Stern, David Alan. Acting with an Accent. Dialect Accents Specialists, Inc., 51 Depot St. Lyndonville, Vt. 05851-0044.
Wells, J.C. Accents of English. London: Cambridge University Press, 1982, rep. 1985.