One Language, Many Voices

Long description:

Recordings in this collection can be played by anyone.

This selection of recordings documents the way that people define their own accent. The collection, created between November 2010 and April 2011 by visitors to the British Library exhibition, Evolving English: One Language, Many Voices includes descriptions of accents influenced by geography, education, friends, family, occupation, social class and the media. Each person was asked to say where they thought their accent came from, including whatever information they thought was relevant.

The Evolving English exhibition explored the evolution of the English Language over 1,500 years through the Library's collections and celebrated historic and contemporary diversity by presenting examples of English usage across time and space. Visitors to the Library’s Paccar Gallery in St Pancras and to complementary mini exhibitions held at six partner libraries across England (Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle, Norwich and Plymouth) were encouraged to contribute a voice recording to create a snapshot of spoken English at the start of the 21st century. They could either submit a word or phrase they felt was somehow ‘special’ in their variety of English (the ‘WordBank’) or recite a reading passage designed to capture their accent (the ‘VoiceBank’). They were also asked to consider how their voices reflect their linguistic identity (‘One Language, Many Voices’).