July 17th:

I took the bus from Castletown to Douglas and then from Douglas to Ramsey to find a Manxman who hadn’t ever lived away from the Island. According to most tips I got, most people in Douglas and Castletown have lived away from the Island for at least a short time in their lives, and the North was my best bet. Why did I need such a person?

To record their accent and submit it to the Speech Accent Archive! It’s an extremely cool site run by George Mason University that records people from all over the world speaking English (native English speakers or no) and documents, analyzes and archives their accent. Nobody had documented the Isle of Man yet, and people here have quite a unique English accent! I decided it would be worth the effort, so I found a lovely woman named Penny who had never left the Island, and she was more than happy to help me out. I submitted the sample, and the director of the program has already emailed me to let me know that it’ll be up on the site within the week. Browse through the archive! It’s very interesting.

Anyway, I’ll be posting pictures from my adventures today as soon as possible.

EDIT: They put up the sample I recorded. If ya’d like to here it, just go here and press play. They’ll add the phonetic evaluation whenever they get around to it.