American Memory

If a pedigree chart were compared to the bones of the body of familyhistory, the flesh and life of the body would be the stories and historyof the people. But have you ever wondered how your ancestors' speechsounded? Have you ever explored the AmericanEnglish Dialect Recordings of The Center for Applied LinguisticsCollection in TheLibrary of Congress, American Memory? The website describes theproject as follows:

The Center for Applied Linguistics Collection contains 118 hours of recordings documenting North American Englishdialects. The recordings include speech samples, linguistic interviews,oral histories, conversations, and excerpts from public speeches. Theywere drawn from various archives, and from the private collections offifty collectors, including linguists, dialectologists, andfolklorists. They were submitted to the Center for Applied Linguisticsas part of a project entitled "A Survey and Collection of AmericanEnglish Dialect Recordings," which was funded by the Center for AppliedLinguistics and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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American Memory

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