Dialects of the United States

This app by renowned dialect coach Paul Meier contains the six dialects of the United States currently offered by Paul Meier Dialect Services. The dialects are: General American, Downeast New England, New York, South Boston (Southie), American Southern (the rhotic dialect found throughout the South but especially in Kentucky, Tennessee, and the rest of the mid-South), and Deep South (the non-rhotic dialect commonly found in Alabama, Mississippi, and Georgia).

Each dialect is contained in its own ebook within the app, and each is easily and quickly downloadable by simply tapping your screen, and tapping again to open. This app is not meant to be an exhaustive survey of American dialects but simply a taste of six of the most common American dialects actors encounter.

The ebooks are richly enhanced with the author’s own recorded instruction. Meier’s system coaches the “signature sounds” of the dialect and gives you fun word drills, sentences, and great audition monologues from plays and films. He also gives you access to recordings of native speakers and allows you to follow up with a Skype session or earn a Paul Meier Certificate of Proficiency.

Each of the six ebooks in this app are also available individually through iTunes, as are 18 more dialects and accents from Paul Meier Dialect Services. They are all part of Meier’s larger collection, Accents & Dialects for Stage and Screen. However, if you want two or more American dialects, this app is your best bargain.

Meier is one of the world’s most respected authorities on stage dialects, and is a successful dialect coach for theatre, film, and voice-over. He’s also a leading “accent reduction” specialist and founder of the International Dialects of English Archive, or IDEA, the leading online source for accent and dialect recordings of real-life speakers of English.