Five thicks slabs of blue cheese

[ludickid]

Thanks to thebitterguy for this...I bet, like me, he beelined right to the Arabic speakers section.

What is it? It's an audio archive of accented English from George Mason University. They record a number of English-speakers (native and non-native) reading a stock sentence, provide background about each speaker (nationality, age, how many years they've

Comments

[thebitterguy]

Does the Arabic section include anyone from Egypt? Because I love the Egyptian accent.

I didn't actually get a chance to listen to any of them; I posted to link so I'd be able to find it again.

[ludickid]

Yeah, there's one Egyptian Arabic. There's also a Saudi (my peeps! yo yo!), a Syrian (a teenager with a really smooth, almost unaccented way of speaking), a Q'atari, a Yemeni, three Moroccans, a Tunisian, a heavily accented Iraqi, a Palestinian woman, a Lebanese, and someone from the U.A.E.

Thanks for posting this, man! I really dig it.

[andieflynn]

Oh, that's great! Listen to the woman under the Basque from Vizcaya section. She's all "eh?" and "wait a minute". She reminds me of my gramma, only my gramma's English is even worse.

[rum_holiday]

Very cool. I bet Doug would get a kick out of this too.

[superdaintykate]

I AM DYING FOR LACK OF A FUNCTIONING SOUNDCARD.

I shake my fist at the computer, in vain. Arrgh!

[superdaintykate]

Seriously, though, it sounds like these samples might be like those we had to listen to in my Phonetics class to transcribe. Which were awesome, even if they were Americans.

NB: the word to separate the men from the boys, transcription-wise: "Pizza".

[masterninja66]

Don't keep us waiting. How can you transcribe "pizza" into IPA?

[superdaintykate]

I don't have the savvy to do it via my keyboard, of cuss, but the true n00b error is to include a /z/.

[masterninja66]

Holy shit, this may be my new favorite site ever!