Dialects for Voice Actors.
Yesterday I received an entertaining email from one of my favorite clients, Richard, for whom I’ve done several large jobs requiring accents. His company produces educational software and he hired me to provide an Australian voice for “Miss Melberry” in a maps and graphs project, and a Georgia accent for a lizard (“Miss Lizzy”) in a reading skills module. I’ve also done Teacher’s Voices on several occasions.
Richard’s email included an exchange he’d had with a 4th grade teacher in Lowell, Massachusetts who has just started using the maps and graphs software with Miss Melberry. She wrote that the kids “really enjoyed it” but that one of the children said of Miss Melberry, “She’s not from around here, is she?”
Richard’s response included the following:
“Actually, Miss Melberry is from western Massachusetts; or, at least, her voice is. If you'd like to learn more about the excellent voiceover artist who voiced Miss Melberry (and loves to do accents), check out http://www.mcmvoices.com/. She is very good.”
Well, you can see why Richard is one of my favorite clients.
Australian accents are not easy. One of the sounds that is exceptionally difficult for non-natives to produce is the long “o”. When I was working on this accent intensively I studied that “o” a lot, and took a couple of snippets from Gillian Lane-Plescia’s Australian and New Zealand Accents for Actors CD and listened to them over and over again. The first one, which you can listen to here, is the phrase “in a moment”. I pulled that off the CD and multiplied it so that it is 25 seconds of just that. The sound is almost like mye-oo-munt. Hard to transcribe, hard to say.
Building on that we come to the second snippet, which is, “I know that bloke’s going to roll over in his boat in a moment”. You can listen to that one here. Lots of long o’s to practise!! If you want to try it, break it up into shorter bits and practise each bit until it sounds good. Practise them all separately and then start to piece them together. If you can master that incredibly difficult phrase, you’ll be ready to take on Australia!
I recommend the Lane-Plescia CDs above all others I've used as the ultimate dialect resource for actors. The sound quality varies because many field interviews with native speakers are included. And of course, it’s those field interviews, as well as Ms. Lane-Plescia’s discussion of the sounds that make these dialects what they are, that are so valuable. You can order them directly from The Dialect Resource or, if you live in or are visiting certain major cities you can buy them in the stores listed.
Other dialect resources:
International Dialects of English Archives
The Speech Accent Archive
American Dialect Links
Say it Like a Texan
More on dialects in future posts. Feel free to add to the list above, which is rudimentary!
Richard’s email included an exchange he’d had with a 4th grade teacher in Lowell, Massachusetts who has just started using the maps and graphs software with Miss Melberry. She wrote that the kids “really enjoyed it” but that one of the children said of Miss Melberry, “She’s not from around here, is she?”
Richard’s response included the following:
“Actually, Miss Melberry is from western Massachusetts; or, at least, her voice is. If you'd like to learn more about the excellent voiceover artist who voiced Miss Melberry (and loves to do accents), check out http://www.mcmvoices.com/. She is very good.”
Well, you can see why Richard is one of my favorite clients.
Australian accents are not easy. One of the sounds that is exceptionally difficult for non-natives to produce is the long “o”. When I was working on this accent intensively I studied that “o” a lot, and took a couple of snippets from Gillian Lane-Plescia’s Australian and New Zealand Accents for Actors CD and listened to them over and over again. The first one, which you can listen to here, is the phrase “in a moment”. I pulled that off the CD and multiplied it so that it is 25 seconds of just that. The sound is almost like mye-oo-munt. Hard to transcribe, hard to say.
Building on that we come to the second snippet, which is, “I know that bloke’s going to roll over in his boat in a moment”. You can listen to that one here. Lots of long o’s to practise!! If you want to try it, break it up into shorter bits and practise each bit until it sounds good. Practise them all separately and then start to piece them together. If you can master that incredibly difficult phrase, you’ll be ready to take on Australia!
I recommend the Lane-Plescia CDs above all others I've used as the ultimate dialect resource for actors. The sound quality varies because many field interviews with native speakers are included. And of course, it’s those field interviews, as well as Ms. Lane-Plescia’s discussion of the sounds that make these dialects what they are, that are so valuable. You can order them directly from The Dialect Resource or, if you live in or are visiting certain major cities you can buy them in the stores listed.
Other dialect resources:
International Dialects of English Archives
The Speech Accent Archive
American Dialect Links
Say it Like a Texan
More on dialects in future posts. Feel free to add to the list above, which is rudimentary!
Labels: Australian accent, dialects for actors, educational software, elearning, Gillian Lane-Plescia, voice talent, voice-over
posted by MCM Voices at
9:21 AM
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