They give depth to theatre and headaches to actors. To alleviate those migraines, Paul Meier, associate professor of theatre and film at the University of Kansas, has created a Web site containing recorded accents that can be used by actors to learn dialects from around the world.
Visitors can listen to dialects and accents from all over the world.
Countries are then broken down even further. For example, South African dialects are split between Pretoria and Cape Town. Now, with sound processing programs, making such an archive is a natural idea. Meier has spent much of his career traveling to movie filming locations as a dialect coach, often using recordings to train actors. Experiences like a job last summer established a need for this quick referencing system, he said.