The Dialect and Heritage Project is a National Lottery Heritage-funded initiative based at the University of Leeds. It aims to open up the extensive Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture to the public and carry out new cutting-edge dialect research by recording dialects and memories from present-day communities. You can learn more about the project here.
The Survey of English Dialects was a survey of people from more than 300 different towns and villages, undertaken by researchers from the University of Leeds during the 1950s and 60s. It intended to make a permanent record of English dialects as they were spoken at the time for use in research on English dialects of the past and future. You can learn more about the original Survey of English Dialects here.
If you would like access to a transcript of one of our sound recordings, please email us with the full name of the sound recording as it is given in the description and we will aim to respond within 10 days. We are hoping that transcripts for all of our sound recordings will be available online soon.
If you would like access to a transcript of one of our sound recordings, please email us with the full name of the sound recording as it is given in the description and we will aim to respond within 10 days. We are hoping that transcripts for all of our sound recordings will be available online soon.
Dialects are unique sets of sounds, words, phrases, and grammatical structures that combine to make up our distinctive ways of speaking. English varies in these different ways from country to country, county to county, and even village to village. You can learn more about what dialect is here.
Dialect involves three main ingredients – pronunciation, vocabulary and grammar – and these can vary hugely according to where you’re from. Taken together, these ingredients combine in distinctive ways to form dialects: different, yet equally valid varieties of the same language. The line between language and dialect is often blurry, though! You can learn more about what dialect is here.
No! All dialects are equally valid and have developed alongside each other over the course of English’s long history. The English language has varied from the time when it first developed, and has been changing ever since, absorbing influences from many different sources over time. You can learn more about what dialect is here.
Our Sound Map has sound recordings from the original Survey of English Dialects that cover the length and breadth of the country. You can search for your area on the map, or you can visit one of our regional content packages to discover content from your region. You can also search the LAVC directly through the University of Leeds Special Collections here.
Watch our handy video tutorial on how to search the Leeds Archive of Vernacular Culture through the University of Leeds Special Collections here.
We’d love for you to get involved! You can complete our new full survey or one of our mini surveys, contribute to our Soundscape or tell us about an interesting dialect word, or you can try our fun quiz. Anyone can take part, and you can find out how to get involved here.
We want to know what dialect words you use! You can tell us about your interesting dialect words here.
There are lots of ways to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing as part of the project! You can join our mailing list here, follow our Instagram or Twitter, and check out the events pages of our Partner Museums to find out what we’re running!
We are partnered with five partner museums across the country with whom we are running a programme of events. These are Avoncroft Museum in Worcestershire, the Dales Countryside Museum in North Yorkshire, The Food Museum in Suffolk, the Ryedale Folk Museum in the North York Moors National Park and the Weald and Downland Living Museum in West Sussex.
However, you can still take part in the project even if we aren’t visiting a museum near you! Find out how to get involved here.
Your dialect words will contribute to the project’s ongoing dialect research, which will be shared with our museum partners, used in future publications and in online project materials, and feature in educational resources and public engagement activities created by the project.
There are lots of ways to keep up-to-date with what we’re doing as part of the project! You can join our mailing list here, follow our Instagram or Twitter, and check out the events pages of our Partner Museums to find out what we’re running!
Yes, absolutely. Whoever you are and wherever you come from, we would love to hear from you.
Yes! The original Survey of English Dialects focused on people from rural England, but this time we want to hear from everyone.
