For the March 2021 episode, Paul discusses the phonetic phenomena known as the glottal stop and the schwa. The glottal stop is that little explosion you feel in your throat when you say phrases such as “uh-huh,” “huh-uh,” and “uh-oh,” while the schwa is the most common vowel in the English language that is not formally a vowel. Instead, it’s a vowel substitute that sounds like “uh.”
The clip from Roar by Katy Perry, Maria Callas singing Summertime, and the Filipino beatboxer Rhelzedeck are used under fair use.
For this month’s podcast, Paul discusses Polari, the secret language used predominantly by gay men in the United Kingdom in the 19th and 20th centuries. Paul’s guest is Paul Baker, professor of English Language at Lancaster University.
Baker has written 18 books, including Fabulosa: The Story of Polari (2019), Sexed Texts (2008), and, with Jo Stanley, Hello Sailor! (2003). He regularly gives talks and workshops about Polari and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.
The clip from Around the Horne is copyright 1966 British Broadcasting Corporation, used under fair use.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
The topic for the January 2021 podcast is what Paul’s guest, Jan Gist, calls “Shakespeare’s Shapely Language.” Shapes is her term for literary or rhetorical tropes; she and Paul broaden the discussion to reflect on how such ancient devices figure in advertising, political oratory, and other forms of the spoken word today.
Jan Gist has been the voice, speech, and dialect coach for Old Globe productions on 89 shows and for 50 USD/Shiley MFA productions. She has coached at theatres around the country including Ahmanson Theatre, La Jolla Playhouse, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Shakespeare Theatre Company in Washington, D.C., The American Shakespeare Center, Utah Shakespearean Festival, Alabama Shakespeare Festival, Arena Stage, San Diego Repertory, North Coast Repertory, Milwaukee Repertory, PlayMakers’ Repertory, Indiana Repertory, American Players Theatre, and Mo’olelo Performing Arts Company. She coached dialects for the film The Rosa ParksStory and recorded dozens of Books To Listen To.
She is an original member of the Voice and Speech Trainers Association (VASTA) and has presented at its conferences, as well as to Voice Foundation’s conferences. Gist has taught workshops at London’s Central School of Speech and Drama and the International Voice Teachers Exchange at the Moscow Art Theatre in Russia. She has been published in numerous VASTA journals. Chapters in books include an interview in Voice and Speech Training in the New Millennium: Conversations with Master Teachers, exercises in The Complete Voice And Speech Workout, and Yiddish, in Jerry Blunt’s More Stage Dialects. Most recently, her article “Voicing Poems”, including some of her own poems, was published in Voice and Speech Review. She is a professor in The Old Globe/USD Shiley Graduate Theatre Program.
December’s podcast focuses on the earliest sound recordings: the experiments of Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (and his phonautograph from the 1850s and 1860s) and Thomas Edison (and his phonograph from the 1870s and 1880s). Paul Meier’s guest is Patrick Feaster, principal of First Sounds.org (along with David Giavannoni) and creator of Phonozoic.net (a website devoted to the history of the phonograph and related media) and Griffonage (a site that explores historical media).
This podcast marks the debut of one of Scott de Martinville’s earliest recordings, from 1857.
Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville
Feaster is media preservation specialist for the Media Digitization and Preservation Initiative at Indiana University Bloomington, where he received his Ph.D in Folklore and Ethnomusicology in 2007. A co-founder of the First Sounds Initiative and three-time Grammy nominee, he has played a central role in identifying, playing back, and contextualizing many of the world’s oldest surviving sound recordings. He is the author of Pictures of Sound: OneThousand Years of Educed Audio, 980-1980, as well as numerous album notes and articles on media history and theory.
Cameron Meier (film critic and historian, executive editor of IDEA, and vice president of Paul Meier Dialect Services) joins the conversation.
The topic for the November 2020 podcast is the Ancient Greek language. Paul’s guest is Rush Rehm, professor of Theater and Classics at Stanford University, and their discussion tackles many aspects of Ancient Greek, including the sound of the language and theatrical performances in Ancient Greece.
Rehm publishes on Greek tragedy, including Euripides’Electra, Understanding Greek Tragic Theatre, Marriage to Death, The Play of Space, Radical Theatre: Greek Tragedy and the Modern World, and Aeschylus’ Oresteia: A Theatre Version. Founder and Artistic Director of Stanford Repertory Theater, he has worked as an actor or director at the several regional theaters in the United States and abroad, including Magic Theater, TheatreWorks, the Alliance Theater, Seven Stages, the Guthrie Theater, Center Theater Group/Getty Museum, Arena Stage, and the McCarter Theater.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
Paul’s guest for October 2020 is the distinguished South African linguist Dr. Joyce Dlamini-Sukumane. Paul and Joyce discuss various topics related to African languages, voices, dialects, and language policy.
Dr. Sukumane’s working career has been predominantly in higher education. She began teaching in 1976, having completed her teacher training in English Literature and African Languages. From the early years of her career and consistent with her training in languages and linguistics, she was privileged to enter the domain of language practice in terminology development, lexicography, translation, editing, orthography reviews, the writing of grammars, and literature development. Her teaching career spanned 27 years before she joined the Public Service as Deputy Director in the Language Planning and Development Unit at the Department of Arts and Culture in 2005. For three years in the position, she managed the development and implementation of national language policies and legislation. In 2008, she was promoted to head the Language Planning and Development Unit as director.
Her various professional roles have been teaching linguistics, languages, and literature in English and African Languages at different institutions of higher learning, which include Parkland State College (Illinois), and the universities of Swaziland, Zululand, Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Limpopo, and South Africa.
While in public service, she valued her invigorating experience as a member of the Basic Education Minister’s Curriculum Management Team for the development of South African Sign Language (SASL). Similarly, serving on the Higher Education Minister’s Advisory Panel on Language Policy and African Languages was exciting, and, most importantly, her constant awareness of the pressing need for the development of African languages was heightened.
Having lived in various countries, she was able to experience firsthand their education systems, particularly in relation to her interest in languages and education. Her greatest achievements have been the final mainstreaming of multilingualism in the promulgation of the Use of Official Languages, Act No. 12 of 2012 and the South African Language Practitioners’ Council Act No. 8 of 2012.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
September’s guest is renowned dialect coach Jerome Butler. Paul and Jerome discuss many topics related to dialect coaching but pay particular attention to accent modification (often called accent reduction), for those wishing to alter their native accent or dialect.
Jerome has been a dialect coach for film, TV, and theatre for more than 20 years. His many film and TV credits include For Life, The Loudest Voice, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind, Infinite, LUCE, When They See Us, This is Us, The Undoing, Just Mercy, The Plot Against America, The Deuce, LBJ, Blade Runner 2049, Zero Dark Thirty, and How Stella Got Her Groove Back, among many others. (Visit his IMDB page for a full list.) He is also the founder of DialectCoachesCorner.com, an innovative resource for accent modification and dialect work.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
In the August 2020 edition of the podcast, Paul discusses foreign-language accents both in the context of acting and everyday comprehension. He addresses issues related to English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers in addition to English-language speakers’ attempts to master languages that are foreign to them, specifically French, German, Russian, etc. Paul also talks about phonetics, the difference between an accent and a dialect, “accent reduction,” and “reverse mistakes” when attempting to either speak a new language or, in the case of an English-language actor, master an accent for the screen or stage.
For The Click Song, visit YouTube, copyright Miriam Makeba. And for The Syringa Tree audio file Paul references in the podcast, visit IDEA.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
For the July 2020 edition of In a Manner of Speaking, Paul introduces his new Estuary dialect product. Estuary, named for the River Thames, is the modern sound of southern England. Crossing ethnic and racial lines, it is spoken in the area that expanded out from London to alter the character of the dialects and accents of the seven “home counties” bordering London, and far beyond. See our Estuary page for more information.
Currently Paul’s Estuary manual is available only by ordering the new Deluxe Streaming Edition of Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen. (This is a new print edition of his book, but for the first time the sound files are delivered through streaming audio, not on CD.)
The movie clips played on this month’s podcast are used under the copyright doctrine of Fair Use. Notting Hill was directed by Roger Michell and is copyright Polygram Filmed Entertainment; Happy-Go-Lucky was directed by Mike Leigh and is copyright Film4 Productions; Lenny Henry at The Apollo is copyright Apollo Theatre Productions; Howards End was directed by James Ivory and is copyright Merchant Ivory Productions; and Ghost Town was directed by David Koepp and is copyright Dreamworks.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
For the June 2020 edition of the podcast, Paul discusses ritual speech, which can include oaths, vows, blessings, mantras, curses, spells, formal prayers, invocations, religious worship, opening ceremonies, atonements, coronations, inaugurations, declarations of sovereignty, and formal sentencings of convicted defendants in criminal courts.
Eric Idle’s Rutland Weekend Television and the Stanley Unwin sketch, A Partly Satirical Broadcast, are both copyright BBC. A Streetcar Named Desire was directed by Elia Kazan, screenplay by Tennessee Williams based on his play by the same name, distributed by Warner Brothers.
See YouTube for Eric Idle’s “Gibberish Sketch” from Rutland Weekend Television. Also see YouTube for Stanley Unwin’s sketch.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
The May 2020 podcast focuses on the Russian language and Russian accents, and features Paul Meier’s special guest, Professor Curtis Ford. Curt and Paul discuss a variety of topics related to Russian speech, including the challenges Russians face when speaking English and the challenges English-speaking actors face when playing Russian characters.
As we practice social distancing and schools transition to online learning during the coronavirus pandemic, Paul explores the power of the spoken word and the necessity of communication, specifically the importance of secret languages. In this month’s podcast (April 2020), Paul discusses Polari, Ob, Pig-Latin, Efe, Pe, Verlan, and similar linguistic traditions.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
Paul’s guest for the March 2020 edition of his podcast is Micha Espinosa, a vocal coach, artist, activist, IDEA associate editor, and professor of voice and acting at Arizona State University. Micha and Paul discuss all things related to the Spanish language, including Spanish linguistics and dialects, and Hispanic, Latino/a/x, and Chicano culture and identity.
For more information on Professor Espinosa, visit her IDEA and VASTA biographies.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
February’s podcast focuses on Scotland, specifically all its rich dialects, accents, and languages. Paul’s guest is Ros Steen, IDEA associate editor, and emeritus professor and fellow of the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland. Formerly she was head of Drama Research and the Centre for Voice in Performance at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, where she established Nadine George Voice Work as the core spoken technique for the Centre’s teaching, practice, and research agendas. For more about Professor Steen, visit her IDEA profile.
The texts you hear demonstrated by Professor Steen:
1. Scottish English:
“It’s a fine auld machine,” I assured him then slipped in a quick commercial which glossed over the typewriter’s crucial lack of the letter I. “I’ll give you a wee demo if you like.”
Adjusting the creased sheet of paper I briskly typed. “There. How’s that?”
He shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Hanged if I know. Havnae got ma readin specs.”
He tugged from his pocket a hankie, so clatty it would’ve been the talk of the steamie.
2. Scots
Lennie Buchan wis harrigal-thin, his knees as knobbly as twa piz stuck doon a pair o’ drinkin straws. A forced plant, wha’s breenged up ower seen tae greet the sun, he ay lookit peely-wally, as if affrontit o’ his prodigious growth.
He hunched hissel up fin he traivelled; his neb dreeped, his een wattered, and his skimpit grey schule brikks wis gad-sake-glued wi’dauds o’ bubblegum. Stains o’ suspicious broon clung aboot the lirks’ o’ his doup, an’ gin aa this wisna enough tae damn the craitur frae favour foriver, he hid skyrie reid hair peppered wi dandruff, a ploukie face, wee bauld bits on his heid and a niff.
From A Nippick o’ Nor’ East Tales: A Doric Hairst by Sheena Blackhall
NEIL: Two years – is it that long? This’ll be a big New Year for you, then. Are you going down to the Market Cross for midnight?
RONA: I’m too old for that. I’d be the only one over eighteen.
NEIL: True enough. Mind, we were just the same.
RONA: We were never that bad.
NEIL: Oh really?
From Auld Lang Syne, by Grace Barnes. Premiered at the Traverse Theatre, 1999.
4. Northeast Scots
Now fin I hear folk speakin’ that wey…I jist go aa’ the braidest Doric that I could possibly gie them…..so that….lats them see that I’m nae cairin’ a dyte….aboot their English… that…I’m a native o’ this bit…o’ Scotland an’ I’d very much like to keep wir native tongue alive……an’ there’s naething….bothers me mair…fin I’m in company tae hear….my ain folk….comin’ awa with great lang gashes….o English mair or less…
Text from a radio interview with Duncan Muirden
5. Borders accent
Did you like the uniform?
No, really, I didnae. Ah didnae like the hat.
Why?
I didnae ken, ah didnae…didnae fancy the hat.
Did you get rid of it as much as you could?
I did. I hid it off as much as I could…well the summer you hid tae…
And were you meant to wear them? I mean did somebody…
Well, that was jist a’, a’ the fashion you see for, for the Bondagers and there were…you got new rigoot for the harvest…that was your new rigoot…eh…for the harvest.
Text from an interview with Agnes Grey, who was a Bondager
6. New Testament in Scots
This is the storie o the birth o Jesus Christ. His mither Mary wis trystit til Joseph, but afore they war mairriet she wis fund tae be wi bairn bi the Halie Spírit. Her husband Joseph, honest man, hed nae mind tae affront her afore the warld an wis for brakkin aff their tryst hidlinweys; an sae he wis een ettlin tae dae, whan an angel o the Lord kythed til him in a draim an said til him, “Joseph, son o Dauvit, be nane feared tae tak Mary your trystit wife intil your hame; the bairn she is cairrein is o the Halie Spírit. She will beir a son, an the name ye ar tae gíe him is Jesus, for he will sauf his fowk frae their sins.” Aa this happent at the wurd spokken bi the Lord throu the Prophet micht be fulfilled: Behaud, the virgin wil bouk an beir a son, an they will caa his name Immanuel – that is, “God wi us”. Whan he hed waukit frae his sleep, Joseph did as the angel hed bidden him, an tuik his trystit wife hame wi him. But he bedditna wi her or she buir a son; an he caa’d the bairn Jesus.
7. Winnie-the-Pooh in Scots
Pooh aye liked a wee sneyster at eleeven o clock on the mornin, and he wis gey please tae see Rabbit bringin oot the plates and tassies; and when Rabbit said, ‘Hinny or condensed mulk wi yer breid?’ he wis that kittled up he said, “Baith,” and syne, sae he didna seem grabbie, he added, “But dinna fash aboot the breid, if ye wull.” And for a lang while efter yon he didna say ocht…till, at last, bummin tae himsel in a claggy kind o voice, he got up, coshly shook Rabbit by the loof, and said he had tae be gettin alang.
“Dae ye hae tae?” Rabbit spiered politely.
“Weel,” said Pooh, “I could bide a bittie langer if it – if ye…” and he tried gey hard to keek in the airt o the pantry.
“As a maitter o fact,” said Rabbit, “ I wis jist gaun oot masel the noo.”
From Winnie-the-Pooh in Scots, translated by James Robertson. Itchy Coo, 2008.
Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.
Paul’s first guest of 2020 is renowned dialect coach Jill McCullough. Co-author of the popular Comma Gets a Cure elicitation passage and dialect coach to dozens of film and television actors, Jill is one of the top professionals in her field. She and Paul discuss all things related to accent and dialect coaching for the entertainment industry.
Her many film credits include the Star Wars films, Jojo Rabbit, The Informer, Yesterday, Baby Driver, The Theory of Everything, Skyfall, Anna Karenina, and The Iron Lady. Visit her IMDB page for her full list of credits.
For the final podcast of 2019, Paul’s guest is UK-based Elspeth Morrison, who, as well as helping actors learn accents and dialects, works on voice and delivery with the entire spectrum of on-air talent at the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) and elsewhere. Paul and Elspeth discuss all things related to broadcast journalism, speech training for on-air presenters, and accents and dialects in the context of British television news.
Elspeth is a former BBC producer who escaped the corporation over 20 years ago to gain an MA in Voice Studies at Central School of Speech and Drama in London. As well as being a lead voice coach there, she has also worked for broadcasters such as CNN, Al Jazeera, and the Weather Network.
Paul’s guest for November 2019 is eminent linguist David Crystal. Paul and David discuss the history of Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as the Queen’s English, BBC English, and Standard British English. They also discuss the newer dialect often referred to as Estuary.
Paul’s guest for October 2019 is his son, Cameron, who serves as vice president of Paul Meier Dialect Services and executive editor of the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). But for purposes of this month’s conversation, Cameron is a film critic for The Orlando Weekly, Euclid Media and MeierMovies, in addition to being a member of the Florida Film Critics Circle. Read more about Cameron at MeierMovies.com.
For information about the upcoming New York production of The Glass Menagerie that Paul references, please visit TheGlassMenageriePlay.com and use promo code MENAGERIE for a discount.
The fair-use audio clips you heard in this month’s podcast are as follows: the interview with Tennessee Williams is copyright Dick Cavett and ABC; Pinocchio and Mary Poppins are copyright the Walt Disney Company; How Green Was My Valley is copyright Twentieth Century Fox; Casablanca is copyright Warner Brothers; Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is copyright Warner Brothers and Morgan Creek Entertainment; The Iron Lady is copyright DJ Films, Film4 and the Weinstein Company; and Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb is copyright Columbia Pictures and Hawk Films.
For his September 2019 podcast, Paul talks to comedy icon Laraine Newman about acting, improv, and the art of the voiceover performer.
For more than 40 years — from Saturday Night Live to the present — Laraine Newman has been making us laugh. For the September podcast, Paul and Laraine discuss her career, acting, improv, and the art of the voiceover performer.
Having lived in Ohio, California, Idaho, Georgia, Oregon, Maine, and Wisconsin, Joan Houston Hall is uniquely suited to her job as editor of DARE. Joan has a Ph.D in English from Emory University, and she joined the staff of DARE in 1975. She became associate editor in 1979 and was named chief editor in 2000 following the death of Frederic Cassidy.
Joan has been president of the American Dialect Society and the Dictionary Society of North America, and she has served on advisory boards for Oxford University Press, National Public Radio’s A Way with Words, the National Museum of Language, and the journals American Speech, the Journal of English Linguistics, and Verbatim.
For more information on the origin of the word “chippie,” which Joan discusses in the podcast, click here. And for an article about dialect coaches who use DARE’s recordings, go here.
Paul’s guests for July 2019 are Gillyanne Kayes and Jeremy Fisher of “Vocal Process,” internationally renowned voice experts specializing in vocal technique and performance in many different genres. A husband-and-wife team, they combine a deep understanding of the voice that comes from science knowledge, performance practice, and decades of experience. The three discuss speaking and singing.
Gillyanne is a voice researcher, pedagogue, and coach, working with numerous artists in theatre, cabaret, and in the recording studio, while Jeremy is a national prizewinning pianist, performance coach and vocal educator. For their full bios, visit VocalProcess.co.uk.
Gillyanne and Jeremy’s recent work includes: This Is A Voice: the book commissioned by the Wellcome Trust on speaking and singing exercises (and beatboxing); The One Minute Voice Warmup app for Android and Apple; the Amazon #1 bestselling ebook How To Sing Legato; and Taking Vocal Technique Into Song, an hour-long, streaming webinar.
The fair-use sound clips you heard in this podcast were: Sweeney Todd, written by Stephen Sondheim and John Logan, directed by Tim Burton, copyright DreamWorks / Parkes+MacDonald Image Nation / The Zanuck Company; and Speaking in Tongues 3, by Sheila Chandra, copyright Sheila Chandra and Real World Records. The Kathy Jensen laughing transcription can be found at YouTube.
Paul’s guest for June 2019 is Rena Cook, a TEDx speaker, author, and voice, speech, confidence, and presentation coach. Rena and Paul discuss voice and speech, particularly among women.
Rena is the founder of Vocal Authority, a training consultancy serving clients who want to use their voice in more commanding and authentic ways. She is the author of Empower your Voice: For Women in Business, Politics and Life and Voice and the Young Actor, and an associate editor of the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA).
Rena has an MA in voice studies from London’s Royal Central School of Speech and Drama. She is professor emerita at the University of Oklahoma. Her dedication to teacher preparation continues as she teaches at the University of Houston on their Summer MA for Drama Teachers program. Rena’s TEDxOU talk is titled “Power without Press: The Foundation of Authentic Communication.”
For the May 2019 edition of his podcast, Paul discusses voice and speech with Kristin Linklater, a towering figure in the world of voice and speech training. Read about Kristin’s career and work at LinklaterVoice.com.
For the April 2019 podcast, Paul discusses speech rhythm with Phil Thompson. Phil is the co-founder of Knight/Thompson Speechwork, a masterteacher of Fitzmaurice Voicework, and a professor in the Department of Drama at the University of California, Irvine. Read more about him at http://drama.arts.uci.edu/faculty/philip-thompson and https://ktspeechwork.org/.
We acknowledge fair use of the brief clip from On the Waterfront, 1954, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Marlon Brando, copyright Columbia Pictures. Paul’s ebook, Voicing Shakespeare, is available here.
Paul’s guests for March 2019 are Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann (an IDEA associate editor from the Edna Manley College in Kingston, Jamaica) and Dylan Paul (Broadway actor, voice and speech expert, and IDEA senior editor). The three discuss the culture, languages, voices, and dialects of the Caribbean.
This month’s podcast, for February 2019, focuses on releasing the power of the text. Paul’s guest is David Alan Stern, one of the longest-established and most popular publishers of dialect help for actors, and professor emeritus of the University of Connecticut. Paul and David discuss the language arts as they impact the spoken word in all its manifestations and delve into topics such as eloquence, emphasis, public speaking, oratory, recitation, rhetorical skills, verse speaking, and vocal variety.
For his first podcast of 2019, Paul discusses the history and sounds of “Strine,” the Australian dialect, with renowned Australian dialect coach Linda Nicholls-Gidley.
Linda is one of Sydney’s most successful dialect coaches and also an associate editor of IDEA. Visit Vocovox.com.au/ for more information on Linda.
For the his final podcast of 2018, Paul discusses idiolects with Amy Stoller, one of New York’s most successful dialect coaches. Amy is an IDEA associate editor and creator of the Stoller System.
For more information on this month’s guest, Amy Stoller, see her website.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
Paul’s musings for the November 2018 podcast start with the old adage “It’s not what you say; it’s how you say it,” and take off from there to cover sacred texts, profane politicians, and pumped-up actors.
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
For the October 2018 podcast, Paul’s guest is Jim Johnson, who is an IDEA associate editor, a professor and director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Houston School of Theatre & Dance, and founder of AccentHelp. Paul and Jim talk about dialects and accents, dialect-sample gathering, dialects on stage and in film, and accents and dialects in life.
For more information on this month’s guest, Jim Johnson, see his IDEA page.
This month is all about phonetics and spelling. For the September 2018 episode, Paul offers up a provocative thought experiment that floats the idea of reforming our everyday spelling, replacing it with the International Phonetic Alphabet.
Click here to download the accompanying PDF. This document is not just a full transcript of this month’s podcast, but also a guide to the phonetics.
What’s in a name? In this episode, from August 2018, Paul asks why native English speakers across most ethnicities and cultures are apparently addicted to two-syllable names for their children, names with the accent on the first syllable. Why are names like Mary and David at the top of the list and not Celeste and Emil?
In this episode, from July 2018, Paul leads the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA). Paul gives insights into the founding of IDEA back in 1998, and we hear from a few people who have had a large role to play in the archive’s success over the last two decades.
Paul’s guest for June 2018 is David Crystal, one of the world’s most famous linguists and the leader of the modern movement we call OP: Original Pronunciation of Shakespeare’s works. David explains the fascinating linguistic subfield called Pragmatics, which he defines as the “study of the choices that you make when you use language, the reasons for those choices, and the effects that the choices convey.” See David’s websites: http://originalpronunciation.com/, www.davidcrystal.com, and https://www.shakespeareswords.com/.
Paul’s special guest for May 2018 is Cameron Meier, Executive Editor of IDEA, Vice President of Paul Meier Dialect Services, journalist (see MeierMovies.com), and Paul’s son. Paul and Cameron discuss the art of the newscaster and the values of broadcast journalism while listening to clips from famous newscasters.
In this episode, Paul talks with guests Sera-Lys McArthur (a mixed-race Canadian actress) and Eric Armstrong (professor of theatre at York University in Toronto). While the speech of Indigenous people (particularly those of North America) is the broad topic, Eric and Paul also talk at length about the politics and ethics of dialect work in theatre and film, and of the gathering of dialect samples from Indigenous speech donors. You will hear a clip from Sera-Lys McArthur’s miniseries, The Englishman’s Boy. The text and translation of the Nakota speech you will hear in that clip is as follows:
Eeneedukabee hay. Weebazoga yuka kyana.
Are you hungry? There are Saskatoon berry bushes nearby.
Hee, owa-yagay washtay
Oh, that is very pretty!
Duka wakta, weebazoga oda nuda shten nee-‘ray neeyazakta
Be careful: if you eat too many Saskatoon berries, your stomach will really hurt.
And for more information on this topic, you might check out a new short film titled To Wake Up the Nakota Language. Described as “a tender portrait of Armand McArthur, the last fluent speaker of the Nakota language in Pheasant Rump First Nation, Treaty 4 territory in southern Saskatchewan,” the film is playing the DOXA Documentary Film Festival in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in May.
In this month’s podcast, Paul discusses the art of audiobook narration with industry leaders Tavia Gilbert and Julia Whelan. Find Julia’s work on Audible.com here and Tavia’s at this link. My Oxford Year will be published in April and released on Audible on April 24; see this link. See this link for details of Be Frank with Me.
This first podcast focuses on Shakespeare’s Original Pronunciation (the dialect of English spoken in the late 16th and early 17th century). It also serves as an introduction to the entire In a Manner of Speaking series, as Paul briefly touches on several topics of upcoming podcasts. For more information about the Orlando Shakespeare Theater’s upcoming production of Twelfth Night, visit the site. And here is the Original Pronunciation text that Paul references:
If music be the food of love, play on ɪf mju̹ːzɪk beː ðə fu̹ːd ə lɤv ple ɑːn
Give me excess of it, that surfeiting, gɪ mɪ ɪksɛs əv ɪt ðət sɐ˞fətɪn
The appetite may sicken and so die. ðɪ apətəit mɛ sɪkn̩ n̩ so dəi
That strain again! It had a dying fall. ðat stɹɛːn əgɛn ɪt ad ə dəiɪn fɑːɫ
O, it came o’er my ear like the sweet sound o ɪt kɛː oə˞ mɪ i˞ ləik ðə sweːt səʊnd
That breathes upon a bank of violets. ðət bɹeːðz əpɑn ə baŋk ə vəiəlɪts
[Duke Orsino, Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare, Act I, Scene 1]
(Bach’s Cello Suite #1 in G Major BMV 1007 Prelude (by Ivan Dolgunov) courtesy of Jamendo Licensing.)
For the March 2021 episode, Paul discusses the phonetic phenomena known as the glottal stop and the schwa. The glottal stop is that little explosion you feel in your throat when you say phrases such as “uh-huh,” “huh-uh,” and “uh-oh,” while the schwa is the most common vowel in the English language that is not formally a vowel. Instead, it’s a vowel substitute that sounds like “uh.”
In the August 2020 edition of the podcast, Paul discusses foreign-language accents both in the context of acting and everyday comprehension. He addresses issues related to English as a Second Language (ESL) speakers in addition to English-language speakers’ attempts to master languages that are foreign to them, specifically French, German, Russian, etc. Paul also talks about phonetics, the difference between an accent and a dialect, “accent reduction,” and “reverse mistakes” when attempting to either speak a new language or, in the case of an English-language actor, master an accent for the screen or stage.
For the July 2020 edition of In a Manner of Speaking, Paul introduces his new Estuary dialect product. Estuary, named for the River Thames, is the modern sound of southern England. Crossing ethnic and racial lines, it is spoken in the area that expanded out from London to alter the character of the dialects and accents of the seven “home counties” bordering London, and far beyond. See our 
What’s in a name? In this episode, from August 2018, Paul asks why native English speakers across most ethnicities and cultures are apparently addicted to two-syllable names for their children, names with the accent on the first syllable. Why are names like Mary and David at the top of the list and not Celeste and Emil?
In this episode, from July 2018, Paul leads the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of the 
