Atlas of English accents around the world

Accent Maps

Let’s start with the best: world maps that let you hear how people speak English in each location .

I have selected for you the two sites which are for me the best because they allow you to quickly and intelligently discover an accent .

SoundComparisons

SoundComparisons lets you compare the pronunciation around the world of a selection of 110 words, in 47 English accents .

(The site offers the comparison of many languages, so make sure you have selected Englishesin the drop-down menu, at the top left of the site).

Use: click on the word you are interested in in the right panel, then use the map or the tabs to listen to the pronunciation of the word around the world.

Selection of links:

• The word house . Observe how the pronunciation of such a common word varies with accents.
• Different English accents:
  • Standard Accents
    • The standard American accent (Pittsburg)
    • The Standard British Accent (or Received Pronunciation )
  • Regional accents
    • Australian Accent (Perth)
    • The Standard Canadian Accent
    • The Standard Scottish Accent
    • The Irish Accent (Belfast)
    • New Zealand accent (Auckland)
    • South African accent (Johannesburg)

You can also explore English accents from the North of England or even Indian English accents .

Tips :

• Use the play buttonto read all the words in one go.
• You can also use the left panel to choose from accents, organized by region .
• Compare the accents that interest you two by two . There is no point in doing everything at once. Focus on the accents that interest you.

This site is excellent for comparing the many British English accents or for starting to open your ear to the different accents of the world .

Phonetic transcriptions are available for most recordings, allowing you to practice English accents with your eyes, in addition to your ears.

Limits: the site offers little data for the United States; an English accent isn’t just words alone, it’s also the melody of whole sentences, so you’ll want to supplement this excellent site with longer recordings.

IDEA

IDEA ( International Dialects of English Archive ) publishes the same text recorded in hundreds of English accents , followed by a mini-interview where the person speaks freely.

A few stats: the site contains over 1,300 recordings from around 100 countries, including over 600 from English-speaking countries . Each recording gives information about the speaker (sex, age, origins, etc.).

Find out how to say countries and nationalities in English !

It is a fantastic complement to the previous site because it allows you to work on your accent at the scale of sentences and no longer of words.

Use: listen to one or more recordings on the accent that interests you.

• Map of recordings . Zoom into the map.
• List of accents and registrations by region and country

The recorded text is Comma Gets a Cure , a text designed specifically to illustrate the differences between English accents . (A few older recordings use the text The Rainbow Passage instead).

Link Selection: Again, this is a huge resource, so here’s something to help you focus.

Standard English Accents:

• General American , the standard American accent.
• Received Pronunciation (RP) , the standard British accent.

Regional English Accents:

• North America :
  • The accents of the United States (hundreds of recordings, classified by state)
  • Canadian accents (69 recordings)
• British islands :
  • The English Accents of England (95 recordings, sorted by region)
  • Scottish accents (23 recordings)
  • Accents of Wales (7 recordings)
  • Ireland and Northern Ireland for Irish accents (24 records)
• Oceania:
  • Australian accents (32 recordings)
  • New Zealand accents (18 recordings)

I focused on the main accents, in regions where English is the native language , but the site also contains many recordings in other accents (Italian, Indian, Chinese, etc.).

Tips :

• To skip the copyright warning message at the beginning of the recordings, use the right arrow key on the keyboard to skip ahead ten seconds .
• If you are planning a trip abroad, using this site is the best way to familiarize yourself with an accent .
• To imitate an accent (and thus improve your English accent), use as much as possible a speaker of the same sex, the same age and with the same tone of voice as you.

Even more audio

Use SoundComparisons and International Dialects of English Archive first .

If needed, here are additional resources. They will be useful to you: either if you exhaust those given above , or if you have a precise objective in mind (for example: expatriation in a very precise region of England).

The Speech Accent Archive

The Speech Accent Archive contains 2,351 recordings in English . It is each time the same text, short, with its phonetic transcription .

The minimalist format helps to see a lot of accents quite quickly. The site also includes an advanced search function.

There are 587 recordings on this site where the native language of the speaker is English.

British Library Sounds

The Accents & Dialects section of the British Library provides an overview of English as it is spoken around the world and across the UK. Especially :

• BBC Voices contains 283 interviews with Britons across the UK (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). The recordings are organized bycounty(county, the equivalent of a department).
• Evolving English VoiceBank offers 131 recordings organized by country or generation, then by city.
• Evolving English WordBank features 283 short recordings that explain the meaning ofEnglish slang wordsor the meaning of regional words.

The site also offers many other parts, from more personal conversations, people describing their own accent, to older recordings to see how English has changed over time.

The limitation of the site is that it does not contain transcriptions of the recordings. So if you’re not familiar with English regional accents yet, you’ll want to start with the higher shared maps .

Aschmann

Aschmann’s Map of American English Dialects . The author of this page collects American accents in the form of a map and a table . The site contains links to almost a thousand recordings.

The interface of the site is not ideal and I advise you to look for the name of the city that interests you in the table. Anyway, a very interesting project.

The map provides a delineation of the dialects and accents spoken in the United States and Canada and contains great detail on regional variations in pronunciation.

AmerLangs

American Languages: Our Nation’s Many Voices is the amalgamation of several projects to document the varieties of regional English spoken in the United States. It can be anadditional audio sourcefor studying accents.

The interface is limited. Click the button Search the collectionand then type the name of a city or US state.

In parallel, the project has recordings with transcription of the audio here .

Note that most of the material was recorded in the late 60’s. People speak slower in my opinion than nowadays, which can be helpful.

The Atlas of North American English

The Atlas of North American English proposes to describe, in explanations, in images and with audio, the accents present on the North American continent.

I hesitated to add it to the list because the interface is dated but, for someone who wants to discover American accents , it’s a real gold mine. Basics of English phonetics will be necessary to take advantage of this site.

Quiz!

When you’ve explored the resources above, why not test yourself a bit on English accents?

• Accent Map of the British Isles
  • Object of the game: recognize the various British accents.
• Your Ear Test · A test on IDEA .
  • Object of the game: recognize the various English accents around the world.
• Test Your Understanding · Another test on IDEA .
  • Goal of the game: to understand an accent that is difficult for natives or foreigners.
    • The first one shouldn’t worry you 😉
    • Listen to the recording and try to transcribe what the person says (on paper or computer). Then compare your answer with the original.

See as well

For more on English accents around the world , see:

• 11 English accents to know and recognize . Our introduction to English accents with all the accents you need to know, in a light format, with many videos to listen to them.

But also :

• Succeed orally in English. My English phonetics course for Indian speakers.
• American or British English: which dialect to learn?
• DialectBlog.com . A great blog on English dialects and accents.
• The English Dialects and Accents section of the site.

To improve your comprehension and your oral expression in English in general , see:

• The English Phonetics section of the site.