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British Library’s English dialects collection

May 22nd, 2005

England has some of the most varied accents and dialects of any country in the world. In fact, the British Isles as a whole are blessed with colour and variety in their spoken languages. Multiple invasions and migrations over the centuries have given us truly regional forms of speech.

The tax funded British Library has put together an audio archive of these accents and dialects. Why, then, do they restrict access by making them available only in the proprietary WMA format? To make it worse, you can only stream the audio!

Jonathan Robinson is the curator in charge of the collection; time to write an email, I think.

Via Ray Girvan.

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  1. May 22nd, 2005 at 21:13 | #1

    Really interesting stuff. I’m amazed by the amount of accents. We have a lot of them in France, but you are winning this one hands down!

  2. May 24th, 2005 at 08:00 | #2

    why not put his email so people can email him about this issue?

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