Accents

The recordings of interviews in our holdings can be used to study the way people spoke as well as the subjects they talked about. To assist in this area of research, links are given below to lists of the digitised recordings arranged according to the accents of the interviewees. The links in these lists are to the relevant catalogue records from which the recordings can be played.

Under each geographical or other heading, the interviews are arranged chronologically by the interviewee's stated or estimated birth year (which range from 1882 to 1959) and then by year of recording (which are mainly in the 1980s). The sex of the interviewee is also given.

Most interviewees in the geographical sections are listed under their birthplaces but some are listed under the places where they grew up if they moved there soon after birth.

Unless otherwise stated, interviewees from British and Irish regions were manual workers. Interviewees described as non-manual include trade union officials and industrial managers who may earlier have been manual workers.

Where a recording is of someone talking in a context other than an interview, this is noted.

England

Scotland

Wales

'Received pronunciation'

Beyond Britain