John Aston

A Ticklish Statistical Problem: Studying dialect variation from speech recordings

Mr. Tickle is one of the most well-known and best-loved British children stories, but how does it sound if it is read in London compared with it being read in Newcastle or Liverpool? Of course, the words are the same; but the accents might be very different.

Using the British Library sound archive of Mr. Tickle recordings , we are now evolving the traditional way that accents are considered, allowing a much more realistic and even interactive interpretation to be given, thanks to the statistical analysis of the speech recordings.

Sound examples:

Estimated average pronunciation of the word "fast" in the North of England.

Estimated average pronunciation of the word "fast" in the South of England.

The output of this project has been published on Significance, an official magazine and website of both the Royal Statistical Society (RSS) and the American Statistical Association (ASA).

Project Participants:

Marius Tirlea

Davide Pigoli

Shahin Tavakoli

John Aston