Evolving English VoiceBank

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

This selection of recordings celebrates present-day English accents worldwide. The collection, created between November 2010 and April 2011 by visitors to the British Library exhibition, Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices, includes contributors of all ages and embraces varieties of English in the UK and overseas including non-native speakers.

The Evolving English exhibition explored the evolution of the English Language over 1,500 years through the Library's collections and celebrated historic and contemporary diversity by presenting examples of English usage across time and space. Visitors to the Library’s Paccar Gallery in St Pancras and to complementary mini exhibitions held at six partner libraries across England (Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich and Plymouth) were encouraged to contribute a voice recording to create a snapshot of spoken English at the start of the 21st century. They could either submit a word or phrase they felt was somehow ‘special’ in their variety of English (the ‘WordBank’) or recite a reading passage designed to capture their accent (the ‘VoiceBank’). They were also asked to consider how their voices reflect their linguistic identity (‘One Language, Many Voices’).

The exhibition attracted over 147,000 visitors, approximately 15,000 of whom submitted recordings that resulted in a substantial audio archive. The passage chosen for the ‘VoiceBank’ was a children’s story, Mr Tickle (© 1971 Roger Hargreaves), since a straightforward text allows speakers of all ages to read confidently, including non-native speakers of different abilities. Research also shows that a familiar text encourages a more relaxed, authentic speech style. More importantly the text contains a near comprehensive set of English vowel and consonant variants and a range of connected speech process that enable comparisons between speakers.