Actors, welcome to IDEA. The International Dialects of English Archive was created by Paul Meier in 1998 as the internet’s first archive of primary-source recordings of English-language dialects and accents as heard around the world. With roughly 1,700 samples from 135 countries and territories, and more than 170 hours of recordings, IDEA is now the largest archive of its kind.

IDEA’s recordings are principally in English, are of native speakers, and include both English-language dialects and English spoken in the accents of other languages. (Many include brief demonstrations of the speaker’s native language, too.) The archive also includes extensive Special Collections.