Can you tell North East accents apart?

People are being invited by researchers to help them discover how truly distinctive various north-east England accents are.

Dr Cong Zhang at the University of Newcastle is holding a drop-in session on Saturday at the Farrell Centre for members of the public between 10:00 GMT and 15:00 GMT.

People will be asked to listen to recordings of various people across the North East and try to identify where they are from solely from their voices.

Dr Zhang said the team predicted that people would struggle with the task, but said her friends were far more confident with their chances.

The researcher said the event was a celebration of the "richness and the diversity" of accents from the region.

"We want to find out using authentic audio data whether people can the differences between local accents," said Dr Zhang.

The team will be assessing vocal sounds from Northumberland, Tyne and Wear and Durham on a county level, plus different areas of Newcastle, Gateshead, North Tyneside, South Tyneside and Sunderland on a more local level.

"Compared with standard southern British English or general American English, there is still a lot more room for [studying North East accents]," she said.

The drop-in session is part of the university's social sciences festival which is being held until 9 November.

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