Play Acting

Accents, when done poorly, can completely kill a story. It's bad enough that Americans make films about historical events in other countries and do them in English. The least we can do as actors is play the role with a convincing accent. Just watch Harrison Ford and Liam Neeson attempt a Russian accent in K-19: The Widowmaker and you'll see just how bad and embarrassing it can get.

For any accent I've found several things to be helpful:

Engaging with people who have the accent
Listening to the accent
Learning about the accent

Emersion Programs
The best place to start is by talking with the people from the country of interest. If you know someone from that country that you can talk to, take them to coffee and bring your script. Talk to them in their accent. Ask them to critique it. Ask them to read your lines to you in their accent. Bring a tape or digital recorder with you and record them saying your lines -not performing your lines, just saying them.

I know that finding someone on Wednesday from Kazakhstan, taking him to lunch, and then recording his voice so you can practice for your audition on Friday might be a little impossible, especially if your "friend" is Borat. So plan ahead. Always be on the lookout for foreigners and whenever possible make friends with them. Eavesdrop on them. Record them with spy cameras. The government does it, why can't you. And until you have a hard drive full of them, here are some audio resources for the next best thing.

Watch and Learn
The obvious place for an actor to turn for accents is other movies. Movies can be helpful, but in my opinion it's not the best place to start. Although it may be the quickest way to hearing the accent, the effects aren't nearly as quick. You'll be lucky if you find a character that speaks 2,000 words with that accent. Considering there are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 words in the English language you've got to watch a lot of movies to hear each word in your script spoken at least once. And you better have a quick learning tongue, because accents are tough and they take time. Movies are long compared to what you get in return in terms of dialects. Plus, many of the actors will not be from the country under question. They are actors trying to do accents, too. And making a copy of a copy is never a good idea, no matter what the medium. But if you must, click here for a list of actors that have gotten the respect of doing believable accents. And click here for a list of movies with different dialects.

Use Your Head
There are a few places that you can go to learn about the accent on a more intellectual level. These resources attempt to break down the accent and explain to you how it should sound or where the sound resonates from. Sometimes approaching the accent from inside your head is helpful, because it broadens your understanding of the accent. You aren't just hearing it and speaking it, you're understanding how it's different from other dialects and what part of the mouth it gets its sounds from. These other resources are here.

Audio Resources

for free

BBC Voices project
1200 recordings of British and Irish voices

Survey of English Dialects
Over 680 British dialect sound samples to listen to on this website.

Speech Accent Archive
Over 200 different dialects. Everything from Albanian to Zulu. All the readers read the same 70 word English passage.

International Dialects of English Archive (IDEA)
This website has a large collection of downloadable recordings of people from various countries and regions talking in English.

British Library Sound Archive About 12 sound samples exhibiting a wide range of English accents and dialects.

Yorkshire Dialect Verse
Native Yorkshire poets reading their compositions in dialect.

for sale

Accents and Dialects for Stage and Screen
by Paul Meier
CDs and books for 24 dialects. Paul Meier is also a dialect coach who teaches in-person and over the phone. Great books and CDs. ($22 per accent, $50-100 per collection)

Acting with an Accent
by David Alan Stern
CDs and books of one man, David Alan Stern, speaking with 25 accents and talking about them. Can be found at many libraries. ($22 per accent, $45-450 per collection)

Dialect Resource
Dialect CDs for British Isles, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, Italian and Russian by Gillian Lane-Plescia. ($8-21 per accent, $80-120 for collections)

Coaches and Trainers

Voice and Speech Trainers Association, Inc. (VASTA)
A long list of trainers organized by country, state and city.

Stoller System
by Amy Stoller
Dialect Coaching and Design

Other Resources

Foreign Dialects: A Manual for Actors, Directors and Writers
by Lewis and Marguerite Shalett Herman
"Thirty of the principal foreign dialects of the various national groups are given, with character studies, speech peculiarities, and examples of the dialects in easily-read phonetic monologues." (from this book's jacket)

American Dialects: A Manual for Actors, Directors and Writers
by Lewis and Marguerite Shalett Herman
"Instead of the International Phonetic alphabet...the Hermans have made use of our alphabet and...musical inflection charts, diagrams showing the placement of lips, tongue and breath, analysis of local characteristics and exercises...to help students reproduce the dialects." (from this book's jacket)