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The way we speak

Listen to England's changing voice. More than 650 extracts from the Survey of English Dialects and the Millennium Memory Bank document how we spoke and lived in the 20th century.

Curator's choice

Listen to the curator's favourites shown on the left, or follow the links to browse the collection and find out more.

Please see the Glossary for definitions of the phonetic symbols used.

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Glossary of phonetic symbols

British Library Sound Archive

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You can find even more accents & regional dialects recordings in the Sounds Familiar? area of our Learning website, and also on the BBC Voices website.

Copyright notice

Due to copyright restrictions the recordings featured here are only freely available as streaming audio files. They are not available to download. If you wish to obtain a copy of any recording featured here, please send an email to sound-archive@bl.uk to request further information.

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English Accents and Dialects

Housing in Backworth, Tyneside

Curator's choice

Curiosities in Cheadle, Staffs.

Curator's choice

Change in Mulbarton, Norfolk

Curator's choice

Farming in Weare Giffard, Devon

Curator's choice

Baking bread in Welwick, Yorkshire

Curator's choice

Jonathan Robinson
Curator, English Accents and Dialects