Locallingual is the brainchild of a programmer named David. It’s a web-based app that allows visitors to contribute their voices and accents according to regions, towns, countries, languages, and gender. It’s a fascinating online archive of people’s voices and can allow you to hear nuances in accents in regions and it’s also a valueable language learning tool.
It’s incredible how much of a groundswell of interest that this app has gotten with even the most obscure areas having a multitude of people contribute their voices, accents and local sayings.
Like a cross between Urban Dictionary and a toilet wall in a pub, Localingual is filled to the brim with anonymous, cheeky, sweary, shouty, sometimes awful and sometimes downright hilarious contributions from random anonymous people all looking to ironically capture the lingo of their home towns. Some people take it very seriously and others seeing it as an opportunity to attempt to shock the (unshockable) internet.
Here’s what David has to say about the inception of Localingual.
The idea for Localingual came to me while I was on a backpacking trip through Europe. I’ve always been fascinated by the different languages and cultures around the world – being raised bilingual made me appreciate both the vast differences and subtle characteristics of human languages.
Around 3 months into my backpacking trip, I was wandering around in Ukraine while trying to learn a few words. As hard as I tried, I would butcher the simplest of phrases such as “Good day” (Доброго дня). It was difficult to find Ukrainian vocals online, as it is not a widely spoken language, so I practiced by making a few voices recordings of Ukrainians I befriended.
Soon afterwards, I had the idea to post the recordings I’ve made online in an appealing fashion, and Localingual was born! My dream for this site is for it to become the Wikipedia of languages and dialects spoken around the world. For that, I’ll need your help :). Localingual is still in its infancy, so please help me improve the site by sending feedback/feature requests to david@localingual.com
Content Catnip 