The speech accent archive is a collection of speech samples in English. A sample text is read by native and non-native speakers alike from all parts of the globe. This is a great resource for those of you who are learning English to hear sample speech and improve your own accent as a result.

Along with the recording of each speaker, there is a IPA transcription of their pronunciation as well as demographic information about the speaker.

To me it’s interesting to hear how English pronunciation varies from place to place, and depending on native language. For example, here’s some native Spanish speakers reading the sample text, or use the map to see how people from different areas speak.

From the about page:

Everyone who speaks a language, speaks it with an accent. A particular accent essentially reflects a person’s linguistic background. When people listen to someone speak with a different accent from their own, they notice the difference, and they may even make certain biased social judgments about the speaker.

The speech accent archive is established to uniformly exhibit a large set of speech accents from a variety of language backgrounds. Native and non-native speakers of English all read the same English paragraph and are carefully recorded.1 The archive is constructed as a teaching tool and as a research tool. It is meant to be used by linguists as well as other people who simply wish to listen to and compare the accents of different English speakers.

So go check out this site, and if you’re feeling brave, you can even record and upload your own speech sample.

I’ve had several people mention the fact that after studying Spanish, they’ve noticed they can’t spell as well as before in English. I’ve noticed the same thing happen with me.

So in this prospect of learning a second language, we need to take care not to neglect our native language. Here’s four things we can do to better our mastery of our native language. (Note: English is my native language, so this article is written from that perspective, but it can apply to whatever language is your native language.)

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We have a 1.5 year-old baby and it’s very captivating to observe how she is learning Spanish and English simultaneously. For the most part I’m in charge of speaking English with her, and my wife takes care of speaking Spanish with her. And she’s learning. Right now she still does not use full sentences, but she uses many words to express herself.

One thing she does, that I find fascinating, is how she uses two words– one in English and one in Spanish– to describe the same thing. If we’re about to leave the house, and her mother says vámonos, the baby’s reply is ámono, but then if I reply yeah, let’s go, she responds again, in kind, ss go or go go go. The mouths of babes are interesting places. Indeed that was going to be the title of this post and, although intriguing, I don’t know if it conveys the same meaning as the current title.

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If you’re interested in Spanish, you might be interested in language in general. If that’s the case, read on.

Etymologically speaking is a long list of English words that have interesting or peculiar etymologies. It’s a entertaining read that can last over a few sittings, since the page is fairly long. There are some loanwords from Spanish, along with the etymological story behind them.

Here’s a couple of fruity snippets I found interesting.

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