Voices of the UK (audio CD)

Accents and Dialects of English

Do you call a bread roll a bap, barm cake, batch, bread cake, cob, scuffler or stottie? Do you pronounce the word plant to rhyme with ant? One of the most intriguing differences between speech and writing is that even the briefest of spoken utterances can reveal something about our identity.

From Scots to Scouse and Geordie to Cockney, the extraordinary variety of accents and dialects in the UK reflects our society's continuity and change, our local history and our individual identities. Drawn from the extensive collection of language and dialect recordings held by the British Library Sound Archive, these 143 recordings from internationally acclaimed linguistic surveys of the last 100 years capture and celebrate the rich diversity of British English in locations across the whole of the UK.

A cornucopia of recordings of accents and dialects that range from Scots to Scouse. Hear about laying a hedge or making a cartwheel in the 1890's, hunting voles and skating on the Wash in the 1950s and teen angst and filling in the pools in the 1990s. These tiny shards of life strike marvellously real.
The Times