Did you ever notice how some parts of English-speaking North America have strongly distinguishable accents compared to British Columbia? Probably. But have you ever noticed that certain regions of B.C. seem to have some slight differences in the way words are pronounced? Probably not. The differences in accent in British Columbia are extremely subtle, and there is not much information about how and where those differences can occur.

This project investigates accents in British Columbia and will attempt to identify, isolate, and classify those differences according to geographic location, upbringing, and culture. As part of this we will make recordings of long-time residents of B.C. reading a short story, and each of the resulting audio samples will be analysed for accent. For more information about this project (and being a reader) click on some of the headings above.

Get Involved!

To participate in the study, follow this link, which will take you to another website where you can complete the consent form, fill out a demographic questionnaire about your language history, and record your reading of the story. You can also access the page by copying and pasting this link into your browser: https://drawl.linguistics.ubc.ca/.

Do you think there are different accents in British Columbia? If you live in or are from British Columbia, you are invited to participate in an online study that looks at what people think about the varieties of English spoken in BC. This study is being conducted by Dr. Amanda Cardoso (Lecturer, UBC Linguistics), Dr. Molly Babel (UBC Linguistics), and Dr. Bob Pritchard (UBC Music). Please visit our survey to participate!

If you have questions about this project, you can email any of the researchers for clarification.