Accents & Dialects

Access Accents: General American - An accent training resource for actors
Penny Dyer & Gwyneth Strong
The Access Accents CDs bring the highly sought after voice techniques of top voice coach Penny Dyer to the actors fingertips. This CD includes a description of the accent and region, examples of resident speakers, practice sentences, as well as a highly informative companion booklet. Audio CD. $32.95.

American Accent for Canadian Actors
Dr. David Alan Stern
Audio CD
$27.95.

How To Do Accents
Edda Sharp & Jan Haydn Rowles
Whether your accents are wonderful, wobbly or woefully embarrassing, How To Do Accents will give you the insight, tools and confidence to understand the structure of your new accent, providing you with plenty of practical guidance and top tips to keep it firmly in the right place. The book also comes with a CD containing detailed excercises and sample sentences, along with eleven extended recordings of voices from the USA, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England. Softcover, 222 pp. $34.99.

New York City Accents for Actors
Gillian Lane-Plescia
Gillian Lane-Plescia's New York City Accents audio CD includes detailed instuction on various NY accents, such as Brookly, the Bronx, New Rochelle, Manhattan, Queens, and the Lower East Side. $29.95.

Dialects for the Stage
Evageline Machlin
Dialect work is one of the actor's most challenging tasks. Need to know a Russian accent? Playing a German countess or a Midwestern farmhand? These and more accents -- from Yiddish to French Canadian -- are clearly explained in Evangeline Machlin's classic work. Now available in a book-and-CD format, Dialects for the Stage is based on a method of dialect acquisition she developed during her years working with students at Boston University's Division of Theatre. Softcover, 147 pp. $48.50.

Accents: A Manual for Actors
Second revised edition
Robert Blumenfeld
Accents is without a doubt the most useful and complete guide to accents available. Inside you'll find clear instructions on how to speak more than 100 dialects which represent a comprehensive selection from around the globe. Also included, to help you learn, are two CDs on which the author performs several of the exercises from the book. Softcover, 424 pp. $43.50.


Acting With an Accent
David Alan Stern
In the Acting With an Accent series, esteemed linguist, David Alan Stern, provides clear and thorough instruction to 26 different accents from around the globe. Each package includes one booklet (about 20 pages long) and a one-hour CD or audio tape. The recording covers six to ten lessons on pitch characteristics, stress patterns and musculature work. Stern demonstrates the vowel sounds and speech lilts in his own voice, following exercises recorded in the booklet. The last lesson consists of a monologue, printed in the booklet with indications to stresses and pronounciation, to be practised in repetition. The accent packages available are:

American Accents for British Actors (tape only: $59.95)	Italian
American Accents For Canadian Actors	Midwest Farm & Ranch
American Southern	New York City
Arabic	Norweigan & Swedish
Australian	Polish
Boston	Russian
British North Country	Scottish
Chicago	Spanish
Cockney	Standard British
Down-East New England	Texas
Farsi/Persian	Upper-Class Massachusetts (Kennedy-esque)
French	West-Indian/Black African
German	Yiddish
Irish

Previously, the David Alan Stern series was only available on audio cassette; however, he is in the process of discontinuing the tapes and replacing them with CDs. Please call TheatreBooks for availability.
Tapes: $25.95
CDs: $29.95

In conjunction with Roger Karshner, another US-based voice coach, Stern has created two sampler recordings of accents called Dialect Monologues Volumes 1 and 2.

Each features a collection of one to three minute monologues covering all vowel sounds. The monologues are printed in a booklet accompanying the recording.

Volume One includes Texas, Irish, British, French, NYC, Boston, Mountain Southern, Chicago, German, Yiddish, Spanish, Cockney & Italian.

Volume Two includes: Black African, Northern Irish, English South African, Welsh, Cajun, Canadian, Afrikaans, Liverpudlian, Asian Indian, Hebrew, Down East New England, Austrailan, Russian & Scottish.

Volume One is available in either tape ($29.95) or CD ($37.95) format; Volume Two is currently only available in tape format ($29.95)

Stern has also created several other accent-related recordings. These include:

The Sound & Style of American English -- a full course in American accent work contained in two CDs and a booklet. $46.95.

The Speaker's Voice -- a course in diction, breath control and resonance contained in two CDs and a booklet. $41.95.

Speaking Without An Accent -- a course in accent reduction in the regular 20-page booklet and tape package. $25.95.

Tapes on Speaking Without a Boston Accent and Speaking Without a Chicago Accent are also available. $25.95 each.

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Dialect Accents
by Gillian Lane-Plescia
The other series that we have available are the accent CDs produced by Gillian Lane-Plescia. Although she originally focused on the various dialects specific to the English language, the popularity of her work demanded that she expand the breadth of her output to include a complete series of international accent packages. Each of her 13 accent packages includes a 25 page booklet and an hour-long compact disc. The material in each package is divided up as follows:

1) Sound Changes -- common vowel sounds
2) Rhythm & Melody -- discussion of lilt
3) examples of accents (monologues used in this section are also printed in the booklet).

In the third section, Lane-Plescia uses both her own voice and the recorded voices of native speakers (male and female). Additionally, she is careful to include a wide variety of accent variations -- for example, in Accents of The American South: Volume 1, she records 19 different native speakers from 14 different locations in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missippi -- thus offering the student a more complete sampling of regional inflections.

Her accent packages include:

• Accents For Black Actors
• American Southern (Vol. 1 & 2)
• Australia/New Zealand
• British North Country
• Chicago
• Cockney
• French
• German/Dutch
• Irish (Vol. 1 & 2)
• Italian
• New York City
• Russian & Other Slavic Accents
• Scots
• South African
• Spanish
• Standard British
• Welsh

The audio cassettes for this series have gone out of print.
The CD versions are available for $29.95.

Other voice work recordings available through TheatreBooks include:

Stage Dialects
Jerry Blunt
An accent instruction series available in either cassette tapes or book format sold separately. Includes Japanese, Brooklyn, American Southern, Standard British, Cockney, Irish, Scottish, French, Italian, German and Russian. Book, $25.95; set of 3 CDs, $52.95.

More Stage Dialects
Jerry Blunt
Features 56 dialects from all over the world (see Stage Dialects for more information). Book, $32.95

Canajun, Eh: Canadian Dialects For Actors
David Ferry
A fabulous CD covering accents from coast to coast, presented as a series of monologues. $25.00.

Cambridge English Pronouncing Dictionary
Daniel Jones
This 17th edition of Daniel Jones' classic pronounciation guide includes over 80,000 entries, 215,000 pronounciations, full coverage of British and North American pronounciation, useful information on key pronounciation issues, and much more. Softcover 606 pp. $33.95

The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language, 2nd ed.
David Crystal
By offering a rare experience of the English language -- exploring its past, present and future -- this wonderous text has established itself as one of the major publications of recent times. Author David Crystal systematically explains the history, structure, variety and range of uses of English worldwide, employing a rich apparatus of text, pictures, tables, maps, and graphics. Softcover, 499 pp. $40.95.

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Last modified July 15, 2003 .
Please note that all prices are in Canadian dollars. All prices are subject to change without notice.