Accents are fascinating–I’d love to have a collection of them. I don’t know whether it would be better to create a block of English text and have it read by individuals with various accents to hear the differences in the same words, or to just have them say something using their own words (and therefore their own idioms), but I’d love a collection. Not just US and Canada (though the US in particular has an enormous amount of variety, and I’d know a Newfie or a Caper anywhere in the world), but all over. I’d listen to a Scotsman or an Irishman read the phone directory for hours just to hear the lilting brogues. Geordies are difficult to understand at first, but once you listen for a while, it’s really quite pretty and sounds a good bit like Scotland or Ireland. England–indeed, London alone–has so many different sounds for the very same words. Nothing in the world sounds quite like a Cockney. 🙂 Swedes, Norwegians, Danish and Finnish speakers of English make it sound like music, going up-and-down, up-and-down. So do Indians (dots not feathers). French, Spanish and Italians make it sound smooth, Germans and Austrians chop it up. P was playing an Excel tutorial a while back and as I listened, at first I thought “Sounds like German or Austrian, educated at a good school in England”, then as I listened longer, I thought, “Dutch?” and then got it–South Africa. Asians have to work hard to make certain sounds because they do not exist in their language; P made that poor Chinese guy say “loes pok” three times and still didn’t hear “roast pork”. I heard it the first time, though, because there’s a large Asian population in NS and I’m accustomed to the accent. English is an ideal language to hear accents because it has bits of many languages and that makes some words easier and others harder for speakers of certain languages. It is difficult, though, to be a natural mimic like me and NOT seem like I’m making fun of people for picking up their accents after being around them for a while. Anyway, I want a world accent collection. 🙂