Speech Accent Archive

Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person's linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker. The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded. The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers. This dataset allows you to compare the demographic and linguistic backgrounds of the speakers in order to determine which variables are key predictors of each accent. The speech accent archive demonstrates that accents are systematic rather than merely mistaken speech. All of the linguistic analyses of the accents are available for public scrutiny. We welcome comments on the accuracy of our transcriptions and analyses.

但凡使用语言之人，其言语皆带有口音。特定口音本质上反映了使用者的语言习得背景。当听者听到与自身口音迥异的言语时，不仅会察觉到口音差异，甚至可能对说话者做出带有偏见的社会性评判。本语音口音档案库（Speech Accent Archive）旨在系统性展示来自多元语言背景的海量语音口音样本：以英语为母语及非母语的受访者，均朗读同一段英文文本，并被精心录制。本档案库兼具教学与科研双重属性，既可供语言学家使用，也面向所有希望聆听并对比不同英语使用者口音的人群。本数据集支持研究者对比受访者的人口统计学与语言背景特征，从而明确各类变量中对特定口音具有关键预测效力的因素。语音口音档案库的研究表明，口音是具有系统性的语言现象，而非单纯的言语失误。所有针对各类口音的语言学分析结果均对外开放，接受公众核查。我们诚挚欢迎各界对本档案库的转录文本与分析结果的准确性提出意见与建议。