If you've ever had difficulty understanding someone who speaks the same language as you but has a strong regional dialect (Louisiana, Cockney, etc), then you understand that while words are spelled the same way around the world, they are pronounced in completely different ways.An American might say:
Park the car in Harvard yard.
While a person from England might say something more akin to:
Pahk thee cah in Hahvuhd Yahd.
One of the keys to dialect work is breaking down the differences in how specific sounds are pronounced. If you've ever taken a dialect class you were probably introduced to the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). It's an alphabet created by linguists in order to accurately record different dialects exactly as they sound - not how they're spelled.
Unfortunately, IPA can be difficult to learn, especially if you're just working on your own.
Which is why I was so excited when I found "Sephonics", it's a freeware PC program that helps you quickly get up to speed with the English subset of IPA. Definitely worth a look from any actor serious about improving their dialect work. The following is text lifted from the Sephonics website:
Sephonics includes seven different exercises for practising English
pronounciation and the phonetic alphabet, including a phonetic memory game to
relax between the lessons! There are also exercises where you learn to match a
sound to a phonetic sign, transcribe from phonetic text to ordinary text, and
much more! Sephonics is freeware.
Sephonics requires Windows 95 / 98
/ NT / 2000 / XP or better.
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