Fake Accents

* Carrie Gillon and Megan Figueroa make The Vocal Fries, a podcast where they investigate and dismantle linguistic prejudice in all its forms. They have loads of episodes about different linguistic issues and varieties. If you fancy learning more about different varieties of American and Canadian English, you could start with this one about Southern American English, this one about Newfoundland English, or this one about Philadelphia English.

* Lauren Gawne is a Lecturer in linguistics at La Trobe University. Her work focuses on understanding how people use grammar and gesture, with a particular focus on Tibetan languages in Nepal. Lauren writes By Lingo, a regular column for The Big Issue in Australia. She lives in Melbourne, Australia. Lauren is co-host of the linguistics podcast Lingthusiasm. Their episode ‘Sounds you can’t hear - Babies, accents, and phonemes’ is a great companion to this one, for those who want to know more about why we find it so hard to do other people’s accents.

Whether you’re a linguist looking for teaching resources or someone who loves learning about language, Lauren’s Mutual Intelligibility newsletter will help you find the resources you need during the Covid-19 lockdown (and the rest of the time too). Find out more here.

* Conor Reid is the creator of Words To That Effect, a podcast that tells stories of the fiction that shapes popular culture. There are loads of great episodes, but this one about post-apocalyptic fiction feels particularly relevant right now!

* Stephen Lucek is Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellow in Linguistics at University College Dubin. His research on the language of teenagers in Dublin asks questions about educational disadvantage and the influence of media on language attitudes.

* Alister McCarty is the founder of Al’s Action English. He teaches actors how to do Northern Irish accents, and he also teaches English as an additional language. He has a Youtube channel with loads of interesting content, including this playlist about Northern Irish accents. You can get in touch with him at alsactionenglish@gmail.com.

* Nic Redman is an internationally successful voiceover artist and voice & accent coach based in the UK. She trained (twice!) at the prestigious Royal Central School of Speech and Drama, once in performance and again as a voice practitioner. She started her coaching career teaching voice & accents at many of the major drama schools in the UK including RADA, Arts Ed & LIPA. Nic now runs a thriving 1-2-1 practice providing voice, presentation and accent training to all kinds of professional voice users with a client list including actors, comedians, public speakers, business professionals and more. She is the founder of Voice & Accent Hub group on Facebook and co-founder of Northern Voice Collective, both created to offer tailored voice & accent coaching to specific groups of voice users. As a voice actor, Nic works internationally voicing commercial, corporate and character scripts with a client list including Tesco, NSPCC & the BBC. She also co-runs VO Social North, the first VoiceOver meet-up for voice and audio professionals in the North of England, and the Facebook group Voice & Accent Hub. You can find out more and contact her via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Nic co-runs The Voiceover Social Podcast. It’s a fantastic resource for voice actors, but also really interesting for those who are interested in language in general. Their episode on the mid-atlantic accent is a real treat.

* Roanna Davidson is an actress, writer and theatre maker. She starred in Glasgow Girls, a musical by Cora Bissett, and she talks about the role in more depth in this interview. Theatres are closed just now due to lockdown, but when they reopen she’ll be performing in Rona Munro’s play Donny’s Brain at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh. You can find her on Twitter here.

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If you’d like to find out more about the real-life Glasgow Girls and their story, you can watch this award-winning documentary, filmed in 2005.

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