Lend your voice to accent search
ARESEARCH project which is studying the different accents from around the region, is asking Rochdale residents to ‘submit their voice’.
The Manchester Voices project, run by researchers from Manchester Metropolitan University, aims to explore the rich tapestry of accents, dialects, and identities that make up Greater Manchester.
Now they are calling on residents who have lived in Rochdale all their life to submit their voice to help with the project.
Residents can record their voice online while describing the journey on the map provided by the researchers.
Research Associate in Linguistics, Dr Holly Dann, said the words chosen in the map will help pinpoint what makes a Rochdale accent unique.
She said: “This is a starting point to our research so we’re asking people who have lived in one borough of Greater Manchester for most of their life to record themselves describing this image which we’ve made – a winding route going past lots of different objects and send it in.
“We’re going to be using those recordings to pin down what those really, really specific differences are between the different regions of Greater Manchester.” Holly, who works with fellow researchers Dr Rob Drummond, Dr Erin Carrie and Dr Sadie Ryan, added that the technique of using the dotted line to lead the speaker was intended to make the speech more natural.
“We chose the words very specifically to represent different pronunciations that might vary across the region,” she said.
“With a list of words people will revert to a more formal style, like something more associated with school so they might not be using their most vernacular accent.
“Having something that is a bit more free is intended to be more like a natural conversation.”
Previously the team had travelled around the region in an ‘accent van’ to record people’s voices in town centres and are hoping to bring it back once lockdown restrictions allow.
The team are also planning to exhibit their findings in Manchester’s Central Library when the project is completed in 2022, where there will be a permanent audio and visual archive.
Fellow Research Associate in Linguistics, Dr Sadie Ryan, said the project was about more than just the nuances of the region’s accents.
She said: “We’re interested in the differences in the way people speak across the region because in Greater Manchester there’s a lot of variety in the way people speak from place to place.
“We’re interested in pinpointing the differences between how people speak in Rochdale, how people speak in Wigan, but we’re also interested in how people think and feel about the way they speak.
“And also among different groups as well because young people tend to speak quite differently from the older generations so we’re interested in regional differences but also social differences.
“Also a question that’s coming up is what people think of the term ‘Greater Manchester’, because we know a lot of people are like ‘what’s Greater Manchester? That’s not where I live’.”
As well as submitting their voice residents can get involved in the project’s poetry, history and heritage workshops.
Schools can also get involved with the team’s ‘talking about voices’ project, which encourages secondary school pupils to record a podcast about language and how it relates to their identity – with prizes for the best ones.
You can find out more information about the project and submit your voice at the website: https:// www. manchestervoices. org/ submityour-voice/.