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One sentence, 21 British voices

Twenty-one people, from Belfast to Great Yarmouth, read the same paragraph aloud. Linguists wrote down exactly what they heard. Pick a place below and watch a single word change shape.

The map

One word, 21 mouths

Start with Leeds: there, the word “store” is [stɔː]. Now pick Glasgow and watch the final r reappear.

Birmingham Staffordshire (county) Leicester Henley-on-Thames Belfast Glasgow Littlehampton Dudley Londonderry Birmingham Glasgow Strabane Strabane Great Yarmouth Wrexham St Albans Blackpool Belfast York Bury St Edmunds Leeds
Pick a dot on the map, or a row in the table. Neighbouring dots are spaced for legibility; a dashed tick points to the true town.

store, as read in Leeds

Speaker 164 · Leeds · man, 38 · archive page

Link to this voice

Words

All six words, all 21 speakers

Every cell below is verbatim from the archive's transcriptions. Select a row to see that speaker's six words.

SpeakerStellastoresnackbrotherWednesdaystation
Glasgow [stɛla][stɔːɹ][snæ̞k˺][bɹʌðɚ][wɛʔə̆nsdĭ][steɪʃə̃n]
Glasgow [stɛl̻ə][stɔɹ][snæk][bɹʌðɚ][wɛ̃d˺n̩zdeɪ][steɪʃn̩]
Londonderry [stɛlə][stʊɚ][snɐk][bɹʌðɚ][wɛ̝̃nzde][steɪʃɛ̆̃n]
Strabane [stɛlɚ][stɔɚ][snæx][bɹʌðɚ][wʲɛ̃nzde][steːʃn̩]
Strabane [stɛlˠʌː][stɔəɹ][snæk][bɹovɚ][wɛ̃ːnːz̥deɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Belfast [stɛ̝lʌ][stoə̆ɹ][snæk][bɹʌðɝ][wɛ̝̃ːnzde][steʃɪ̆n]
Belfast [stɛ̞lə][stɔ˞][snaːk][bɹʌðə˞][wɛ̃də̆nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
York [stɛlə][stɔə][snæ̞k][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzde][stɛ̝ːʃə̃n]
Blackpool [stɛ̝la̙][stɔː][snæk][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzdi][stɛɪʃə̃n]
Leeds [stɛlə][stɔː][snæk][bɹʊðə][wɛ̃nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Wrexham [stɛla][stɔː][snak][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Staffordshire (county) [stɛ̝lʌ̆][stɔə][snak][bɹʌðɜ][wɛnzde][steɪʃən]
Leicester [stɛlʌ][stɔː][snæk˺][bɹʌðɜ][wɛnz̥deɪ][steɪʃən]
Great Yarmouth [stɛlə][stɔː][snæk][bɹʌvə][wɛ̃nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Dudley [stɛlʌ][stoː][snæk][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzdiː][stẽɪʃə̃n]
Birmingham [stɛlə][stɔː][snæk][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Birmingham [stɛlă][stɔː][snak][bɹoðə][wɛ̃nzdɛɪ][staɪʃɪ̃n]
Bury St Edmunds [stɛlə][stɔː][snæ̞ːk][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
St Albans [stɛla][stɔː][snæ̃k][bɹʌðə][wẽnzdeɪ][steɪʃə̃n]
Henley-on-Thames [stɛlɑ][stoə][snæk][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nz̪deɪ][stẽɪʃə̃n]
Littlehampton [stɛlʌ][stɔː][snæ̝k][bɹʌðə][wɛ̃nzde̞ɪ][ste̞ɪʃə̃n]

Method

How to read this page

The paragraph everybody read

Please call Stella. Ask her to bring these things with her from the store: Six spoons of fresh snow peas, five thick slabs of blue cheese, and maybe a snack for her brother Bob. We also need a small plastic snake and a big toy frog for the kids. She can scoop these things into three red bags, and we will go meet her Wednesday at the train station.

A ten-second guide to the symbols

[ʃ]
sh in “ship”
[ð]
th in “this”
[ɛ]
e in “bed”
[æ]
a in “cat”
[ʌ]
u in “cup”
[ɔː]
aw in “law”, held long
[ə]
the unstressed a in “about”
[ɹ]
ordinary English r
[ɚ]
er with an r coloured in (listen for Belfast and Glasgow)
[ː]
the sound before it is long
[ʔ]
a catch in the throat where a t disappears

Tiny marks above or below a letter record fine phonetic detail — voicing, nasality, exact tongue position. You can ignore them and still read every word.

What this map does not claim

  • Each dot is one individual, recorded once — not the accent of a whole city.
  • Coverage is uneven: 17 places, 12 of them in England.
  • One speaker gave a county, not a town: Staffordshire is plotted at Stafford and labelled as a county.
  • Transcriptions are the archive's own narrow phonetics, reproduced verbatim, cutoff 22 September 2026.
  • Word clips are cut from the paragraph recordings by automatic alignment (method and review list in sources).

Credit

Transcriptions and recordings: the Speech Accent Archive, George Mason University (Weinberger 2015), under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0. Coastline: Natural Earth (public domain). Type: Charis (SIL Open Font License). Selection, extraction and presentation: Marius Comper.

Sources

Every speaker row links to its own archive page with the recording.