Submit Your Own Recording
If you feel that IDEA does not represent your own dialect or accent well enough, and you would like to send us recordings of yourself and your friends, we will be glad to consider adding them to the archive.
PLEASE NOTE: We want speech samples that are typical of the way English is spoken in your part of world. In other words, we are interested mainly in recordings of people who speak English with a strong local accent or dialect. Do not send us a recording to prove how well you have eradicated your local accent. Remember, the people who use IDEA most are actors who must adopt a local accent for the characters they play in plays and films; their job is easiest for them when they listen first to speakers with the strongest accents and dialects.
The following will help you make the most useful recordings and text files:
- Use a good mike! Directional is best. Avoid "p pops" by making sure you are "on mike", and speaking past it, not into it. Save it as an mp3 file (22,050 sample rate, mono, 16-bit - preferred).
- The recording will consist of: first, your reading of Comma Gets A Cure; and second, an unscripted monologue, both on the same recording. In the monologue, talk about your family history, where you were born and raised, place names, local idioms -- the topics that will be most useful in this context. If you speak English in the accent of your first language, please read or recite some brief text (fifteen to thirty seconds) in your own language and include this (in original language plus an English translation) in your text file. Total maximum recording time (reading and monologue): five minutes.
- If you have the skill, please do initial editing of the recording yourself.
- Sign and date the questionnaire/waiver.
- Write the accompanying text file. It will be a Word document, single-spaced, Times New Roman, aligned left, and include the following:
- Paragraph One Your age, date of birth, gender, ethnicity, occupation, and educational level (but not your name; our subjects remain anonymous).
- Paragraph Two Where you were born and raised, and where else you have lived long enough to influence your dialect or accent. If you are an ESL speaker (English as a Second Language), say when, where, and from whom you started learning English.)
- Paragraph Three is your orthographic (not phonetic) transcription (ordinary alphabet, "I was born...") of the unscripted part of the recording (don't transcribe the reading). Your transcription must be verbatim, in a single continuous paragraph, inclusive of ums and ahs, with no attempt to represent pronunciation, be spelled perfectly in American English (e.g. color, not colour), with place name spellings verified. Begin with the following, in caps: TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
- Paragraph Four will read, in caps: SAMPLE RECORDED, SPEECH TRANSCRIBED, AND NOTES WRITTEN BY (YOUR NAME) ON (DATE IN FOLLOWING FORMAT February 20, 1988). Download a template for this document.
- Save all three files by the same filename, using your name, e.g. SMITH.mp3, SMITH.gif, and SMITH.doc. E-mail the recording (.mp3), the waiver (scanned as a .gif or .jpg file), and the text file (.doc) to us as attachments.