General American
These recordings of Comma Gets a Cure were all made by trained speech teachers who speak and teach some variety of "Standard American" or "General American" speech for the stage. They will be useful to those interested in learning what various American speech professionals recommend as a desirable non-regional style of American English.
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Dialect Samples
To properly play a sound sample, you may first need to save it to your own computer. To display the various 'save' options, PC users should right-click on the desired sample below; Mac users should press the Control key while clicking. A high-speed connection to the Internet may allow you to play the file simply by clicking it once or twice.| Sound Sample | Basic Information |
|---|---|
| Eric Armstrong | Eric Armstrong teaches voice and speech at York University in Toronto, Canada. Born & raised in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. As a child, he lived in France for a year, and did half his schooling in French. At 19, he went to Concordia University in Montreal for 3 years, followed by a year at the Drama Studio, London (UK). After working as a professional actor for 5 years in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, Professor Armstrong returned to Toronto to get his MFA in Acting and Teaching Voice under David Smukler at York University. Since then he has lived and taught in Windsor, Ontario, Boston, MA (where he worked at Brandeis University,) and in Chicago (teaching at Roosevelt University). He has taught General American accents to Canadians and Americans alike. |
| Rena Cook | Rena Cook was born and raised in Tucson, Arizona. Her parents were insistent on "good speech" in the home. She moved to Oklahoma in 1979. As a theatre voice and speech specialist, she has received training in General American speech. She is the resident voice specialist at the University of Oklahoma. |
| Mavoureen Dwyer | Mavourneen Dwyer lived her first eight years in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and then in Montreal. She attended a French convent school where "my theatre teachers were all British." She took an MFA in theatre at Houston, and has been based in the US ever since, living in many different cities. She now teaches at the University of Arkansas as a professor of theatre specializing in voice and speech. |
| Rinda Frye | Rinda Frye teaches acting, voice and speech at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Kentucky. She was born in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada and emigrated to Salt Lake City, Utah at the age of 13. After a year in Los Angeles and another in NYC, she returned to SLC to earn a BFA in acting from the University of Utah. While there, she worked as an actor for 5 seasons for the University of Utah Shakespeare Players. Later, she was co-founded and was artistic director of the Utah Shakespeare Players for another five years, where she acted and directed. She lived in Eugene, Oregon for 3 years while earning a Ph.D. at the University of Oregon, moving to Kentucky in 1981 to teach. She currently lives in Carrollton, a small Kentucky town between Louisville and Cincinnati. |
| Joel Goldes | Joel Goldes was born and raised in Northern California, in the San Francisco Bay Area towns of Sebastopol and Santa Rosa. He attended Santa Rosa Junior College, Sonoma State University, and the University of California at Irvine, where he earned an MFA in Drama. Joel lived in New York City for eight years and now resides near Los Angeles, California. |
| Audrey Hager | Audrey Hager was born and raised in Boston, Mass. She received actor training in New York, and training as a voice teacher at the Victorian College of the Arts in the School of Drama, Melboure, Australia. Recorded by Geraldine Cook in Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2002 |
| Daydrie Hague | Daydrie Hague trained at the Crane School of Music at SUNY Potsdam (voice/music education) and received her MFA from the Professional Actor Training Program at the University of Washington in Seattle. She is a Certified Associate Teacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework and is currently the Co-Director of the BFA Performance Program at Auburn University in Auburn Alabama. Previously, she taught Effective Speech at NYU and ESL at Hostos Community College in the Bronx. As a professional actor she has performed Off-Broadway and in regional repertory companies in the the U.S. and Britain. |
| Jim Johnson | Jim Johnson teaches voice and speech at the University of Houston. Born & raised in Newell, Iowa, a small (900 people) largely Danish community in northwest Iowa. At 18, attended a small college 12 miles away from Newell, where he studied Theatre. At age 22, moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he attended graduate school for theatre, receiving an MFA in acting. Spent 10 years in Chicago, and the last 2 in Houston, Texas. |
| Brant Pope | Brant Pope was born and raised in Minnesota. Actor training to the MFA level in America. Recorded by Geraldine Cook in Melbourne, Australia, August 26, 2002 |
| Karen Ryker | Karen Ryker is a Caucasian female, born 1946. She is a professor of Voice and Acting. Dialectic influences - parents were both from Iowa, both college graduates. As a child of military, international living and travel experiences widened sphere of dialectical influences, but parents were careful to monitor speech habits. As an adult, trained in various voice methodologies - major influences include Linklater, Lessac, Berry. |
| Krista Scott | Krista Scott was born and raised in rural Finney County, Kansas, in the Southwest corner of the state. This is High Plains farm and ranch country, and her original ideolect was well seasoned with the nasality, strong retroflexed /r/ and "flat" vowels ("git me wunna them there GUITars, wudja."). She received a BFA in Acting at Emporia State University in Kansas, moved to Minnesota and lived in various places there over 12 years, during which time she co-founded a theatre company in St. Cloud, MN and earned an MFA in Acting at the University of Minnesota. She taught Voice & Speech and Acting courses at the American University in Cairo, Egypt from 1995 to 1999, then moved to Mississippi-from one unique linguistic challenge to another!-where for two years she taught Voice and Acting courses at "Ole Miss". Since 2001 she has been the head of Voice & Speech at Ithaca College in Central New York and continues her research in phonetics, dialects and Fitzmaurice Voicework. |