03.24.06
Where’s that guy from?
I was reading my subscribed RSS feeds the other day and I came across this site that just fascinated me. After I had spent nearly an hour playing around with it, I thought that I needed to share it here. The site has been set up by George Mason University and it deals with the linquistic characteristics of a variety of English speakers. You can click on a spot on the globe and then listen to a native of that area read an English paragraph. What’s really interesting is to see how different all of the native speakers of English are. It’s also fun to quiz someone else and see if they can pinpoint where a speaker is from.
Included in the site are demographic data about the speakers and the phoenetic text of their rendition. The site demonstrates how a project can be disseminated with the Web in ways we could never imagine before. If you visit the site, think how an English or foreign language teacher might use the site to demonstrate linquistic concepts. Kudos to GMU for this.
