National project to hear Canberra’s voices

Canberrans can literally have their say in a new research project to record the Aussie accent. Researchers from the University of Canberra and The Australian National University are involved in the national AusTalk initiative which will record the voices and faces of 1000 speakers of all ages from around the country. Canberrans are invited to apply. By recording and documenting the diversity of Australian accents the project has implications for everything from ordering pizza over the phone to evaluating forensic voice evidence. It will help develop technologies to help deaf people and those with learning difficulties. It will also help define the Aussie accent. 'We have this image of the Australian accent, but at the moment we don't even have enough data to know what we really mean by Aussie accents,' Kinoshita said.