Sound and vision blog

In this 1929 recording for the Linguaphone language learning company, Prof. A. Lloyd James demonstrates English vowel sounds and dipthongs, incidentally creating some incongruous juxtapositions of examples, my personal favourite being 'ginger banana'.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-1CS0011608XX-0100V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item, part of the Linguaphone language series 'English Sounds', was selected from the  Early spoken word recordings collection by Stephen Cleary, Curator of Drama & Literature recordings at the British Library Sound Archive.

Graphic novelist Alan Moore recorded in conversation with Charles Shaar Murray at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in 1987.  Moore discusses his work on the weekly comic 2000 AD, his Watchmen sequence, and the different qualities of comics, novels and films.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-C0095X0300XX-0100V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected from the Institute of Contemporary Arts talks collection by Stephen Cleary, Curator of Drama & Literature recordings at the British Library Sound Archive. The ICA talks collection has 1,000 hours of recordings of events held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the Mall, London, recorded over the period 1981-1994.

Listen to the way this speaker pronounces several <s> sounds in this recording.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0065XX-1000V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item, selected by Jonnie Robinson, a specialist in sociolinguistics & education at the British Library, is a recording of Jesse Bookyer (d.o.b. 1883). It was made by Stanley Ellis and John Wright in 1956 in Stoke St Gregory, Somerset, for the University of Leeds’ Survey of English Dialects.

Listen to the way this speaker pronounces an <r> sound on this recording. The link below also connects to accompanying text with an analysis of the lexis, phonology and grammar heard in this recording.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0002XX-0500V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item, selected by Jonnie Robinson, a specialist in sociolinguistics & education at the British Library, is a recording of William Dodds (d.o.b. 1909). It was made by Clive Upton in May 1974 in Ebchester, Durham, for the University of Leeds Survey of English Dialects.

Reading aloud a passage from her autobiography about her opposition to the first Gulf War, Vanessa Redgrave talks to Simon Callow about her dual career as an actor and political activist and the role of the artist in society.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=024M-C0095X0777XX-0100V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected from the Institute of Contemporary Arts talks collection by Stephen Cleary, Curator of Drama & Literature recordings at the British Library Sound Archive. The ICA talks collection has 1,000 hours of recordings of events held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, in the Mall, London, recorded in the period 1981-1994.

Recounting his childhood experiences of the second world war in Norwich, Brian Staff describes one of the early bombing raids on Norwich, potato rations, and the nearby American aerodrome at Rackheath, a village just to the northeast of Norwich.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0900X11636X-0100V0.xml#

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected by Elspeth Millar, National Life Stories Administrator at the British Library Sound Archive. The recording was made in Norwich in 1999 for the BBC by Wendy Witham for the Millennium Memory Bank, one of the largest single oral history collections in Europe.

Listen to the way this speaker pronounces the word aye [= yes] on the in-breath – an extremely rare feature in English, but common in Scandinavian languages.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0005XX-0300V0.xml

'Recording of the Week' highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, chosen by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected by Jonnie Robinson, a specialist in sociolinguistics & education at the British Library. The recording of Edward Blaire (d.o.b. 1903) was made by Clive Upton in 1974 in Patterdale, Westmorland, for the University of Leeds Survey of English Dialects

Talk of village horse fairs in an accent that I would have heard in my childhood just 9 miles away. Llanymynech straddles the Shrophire (England) / Montgomeryshire (Wales) border and before the 1969(?) Sunday drinking referendum in Montgomeryshire had the distinction that the Welsh part of the local pub was roped off from the English part, being forbidden to sell alcohol on a Sunday.

http://sounds.bl.uk/View.aspx?item=021M-C0908X0012XX-0500V0.xml

Recording of the Week highlights gems from the Archival Sound Recordings website, selected by British Library experts or recommended by listeners. This week's item was selected from the Survey of English Dialects collection by Antony Gordon, senior cataloguer and systems administrator at the British Library Sound Archive. It is an interview of John Edward Humphreys (d.o.b. 1894), made by Michael Barry in 1955 for the University of Leeds.