Sample Exercise:“My father warned that lobster fishing in Maine is a hard life in winter.”
This is the industry standard for the Downeast New England dialect of the United States. Although this region contains many dialects, we will concentrate here on a classic sound that is a bit harder to find these days, but which is delightful and needed not only for contemporary plays and films, but often called for in period pieces and for vernacular speakers. Its core area might be considered coastal Maine, southern New Hampshire, working-class Boston north-shore, Cape Cod, and eastern Rhode Island. Learn to speak like the characters from Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. (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.) For the sound of working-class Boston, see South Boston book/ebook, also available on this site.
TO PURCHASE:
The Downeast New England dialect is available by purchasing Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen. We recommend the Deluxe Streaming version for $79.95, which gives you Downeast 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 Downeast New England 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.
