IDEA - International Dialects of English Archive

http://web.ku.edu/idea/

This website is hosted by the Department of Theatre and Film at the University Of Kansas, and its main purpose is to provide an archive of accents for actors and other artists. The archive is organized by geographical division, from continents to states. Within the United States there are recorded samples of speakers of thirty-five American states. They also provide recordings of people from all over the world speaking English. Anyone who wishes to contribute with a sample of their own accent may do so by e-mailing it to the host’s address indicated on the site. The samples must contain a standard reading (especially designed to cover a wide range of phonemic contexts) followed by an unscripted speech about the speaker’s life. For each sample there is a transcription, some commentaries and biographical information of the speaker. Besides helping actors to reproduce an accent, there are archives of what they call "General American" for actors that want to speak the standard variety. Though it is not a linguistic site their archive is very interesting and diversified.