For all language varieties represented publicly on this site, the following concepts guide us in the selection of speakers and speech sounds:

1 Majority comprehensibility: unless otherwise stated, we record accents that are representative of the broad contemporaneous mass of each population. A test of this principle is that the sounds should be readily comprehensible to the majority of speakers of the same language. So for example we would avoid a Scottish accent if it were so 'broad' as to be incomprehensible to many Americans.

2 Class: unless otherwise stated, we represent the literate middle class, avoiding sounds associated with aristocracy, the very rich, the very poor or the illiterate.

3 Living language: unless otherwise stated, we represent sounds that are actively in use at the time of their publication on this website; they will only become history later, as vowel sounds shift from generation to generation. We will avoid using any sound whose use has become uncommon by the time of publication (Eg "sure" as a triphthong in British English).

4 Authenticity: we will not ask speakers to falsify their accent in any way, seeking rather to represent their natural accent in everyday speech.

5 Sounds on this site are categorised in various ways for convenience and to make learning more efficient. No categorisation of human speech is ever water-tight - some speakers say some 'single' vowel sounds as diphthongs in Texas, for example - but we only use these categorisations to facilitate learning, so please don't expect every sound to fit perfectly into its category, or all sounds to be included - we haven't, for example, included English words beginning with "y" as diphthongs even though strictly speaking they are.

6 The technical quality of sounds on this site is limited by three factors: 1) Current technology: broadband it is not! 2) Acceptable loading times: we have to make some concessions to people's time needs 3) Finance: give us some money and we can probably do it better.

7 One more guiding principle for this website: we will avoid as far as possible the use of any phonetic alphabet or jargon from the dismal science of phonetics, seeking rather to popularise this revealing field of study.

Timothy Bowyer, December 9th, 2000

Comments are welcome