ABI-2: The Second Accents of the British Isles Speech Corpus

The ABI-2 database is a collection of speech recordings of 286 speakers sampled throughout the British Isles.

ABI-2 consists of approximately 70 hours of recordings covering 13 accent regions of the British Isles which are not covered in the original ABI-1 corpus. The material is suitable for training and evaluating speech technology systems or for phonetic study and analysis.

For each region, an average of 10 male and 10 female subjects each recorded around 15 minutes of read speech. The aim was that each speaker and both of their parents should have lived in their particular region all their lives. The material recorded and the recording procedure are the same as in the original ABI-1 corpus, except that each subject recorded an additional set of 22 SCRIBE sentences and, where possible, a 5 minute telephone conversation. The telephone conversational speech will be released as a separate corpus.

Regions

Bristol
Caernarfon
Cardiff
Coalville, Leicestershire
Dudley
Edinburgh
Hartlepool
Hereford
Leeds
Shrewsbury
Southend-on-Sea
Stoke-on-Trent
Standard British English
Yeovil, Somerset

Recording Location

Bedminster Library
Caernarfon Library
Cardiff Central Library
Coalville Library
Dudley
Piershill Library, Piershill
Foggy Furze Library, Hartlepool
Hereford Museum
Pudsey Library
Gateway Centre
Central Library, Southend-on-Sea
City Central Libary, Hanley
Various
Yeovil Baptist Church

Accent

Eastern South West - Bristol
North Wales
Wales - Cardiff
East Midlands
West Midlands - Black Country
Scotland - Edinburgh
North East
Eastern South West - Herefordshire
Central North
Eastern South West - Welsh Borders
South East - Essex
North West Midlands
Standard British English
Eastern South West - Somerset

For further information please contact The Speech Ark - Email: info@thespeechark.com or Tel: +44 (0) 1684 579111