One of the things I end up most fascinated by when I’m traveling is accents.  I remember being a Canadian exchange student to an Italian high school, which was located in the Dolomites so they all actually spoke Ladino, and they took me on a field trip to Paris, where I had a conversation with the Serbian check out clerk in our hotel in French, and thought, Wow, language is neat!

And the first time I went to Australia and heard what I recognize as a distinctively Chinese accent overlaid on a distinctively AUSTRALIAN accent, it was great! My brain knew something was different, but it wasn’t sure how to process what it was hearing…since I’m used to hearing Chinese accents overlaid on Northeastern US accents (or Canadian accents) rather than Australian ones.

When I studied linguistics in university, the teachers pointed out that, thanks to the glory of the phonetic alphabet, you could actually write things EXACTLY the way someone said them, accent and all.  Which is why Sound Comparisons is such a fun website.  The tagline is “accents of English from around the world” and it allows you to listen to audio files (not audiophiles) of pronunciations of various English words, with all their regional accents…and shows you the phonetic markings for them too.  It’s a fun way to pass the time marveling at assorted accents.