British Library Sounds - Accents and Dialects, Oral Histories etc

British Library Sounds
BBC Voices: Accents and Dialects

This website has to be one of my Top Ten Family History Websites. If you are interested in accents and dialects you will be able to listen to 283 conversations about language recorded by BBC Nations and Regions as part of the nationwide BBC Voices survey of 2005.

Using a dropdown box gives many more options and after I chose Oral History it gave a wide selection of topics from Jewish Survivors of the Holocaust to Sport featuring in ‘poll position’ Geoff Capes, born in 1949, a Fen boy and ‘one of nine kids’ of Holbeach, Lincolnshire.

There is also an Advanced Search facility.

 

Considering my 'scon or scone' question i think this is brilliant Jennie! I also went and looked at the Millenium Voices Bank and clicked on the Fovant and Sixpenny-Handley link. It was like listening to my Aunty Josie who lives in that area. How amazing. Thank you for the link.

 

BBC1 had an item about this today and I decided to go back and have a listen to the dialects again. It's certainly made me realise how easy it was for the census inumerators to write down names wrong because they didnt understand the accent. I have seen all sorts of variations in my Jewish ancestors and some of the Norfolk censuses details for my family are hilarious. I have often wondered who did write the details and whether they were locals or someone from the 'big city'?

 

I can say 'hear hear!' to this, Carla. Some of my ancestors left Sheringham, Norfolk for the cotton mills of Lancashire, and one family pops up there with a place of birth of Sherenam. You can see why, but now I always search on FMP for a place of birth of *sher*m*