Sample Exercise:“Now and then my aunt Hilda leaves town to visit her daughter in Salisbury.”
This is the industry standard for the Hampshire dialect of southern England. The county of Hampshire is on the edge of the region traditionally referred to as Wessex, which also roughly contains the counties of Dorset, Wiltshire, Devon, and Somerset. The natives of this ancient region all have a similar sound, characterized by heavily r-colored vowels. Much English dramatic literature contains rustic characters, and a Hampshire dialect is a useful one for an actor to have in order to play “country” or regional roles. Learn to speak like characters from the works of Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy! Interestingly enough, this is also the dialect many people associate with 17th and 18th-century pirates, thanks to British actor Robert Newton’s use of a dialect similar to this in Walt Disney’s 1950 movie Treasure Island. (Paul speaks the entire text himself. So you hear him demonstrate, in dialect, the signature sounds in isolation, the word lists, the practice sentences, and the two monologues.)
TO PURCHASE:
The Hampshire dialect is available by purchasing Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen. We recommend the Deluxe Streaming version for $79.95, which gives you Hampshire plus 26 other dialects and accents. (This is a printed book with the audio files available on a password-protected webpage.)The original CD version of the book, with 24 total dialects and accents on 12 CDs, is also still available.
OR
You may purchase the iTunes ebook (Apple Book) version of Hampshire directly on iTunes by clicking this link, for $29.99. This will play on your iPhone, iPad, and Mac, using Apple’s free Books app, but NOT on your Windows PC.
