Sound comparisons: A new on-line database and resource for research in phonetic diversity

Sound Comparisons hosts over 90,000 individual word recordings and 50,000 narrow phonetic transcriptions from 600 language varieties from eleven language families around the world. This resource is designed to serve researchers in phonetics, phonology and related fields. Transcriptions follow new initiatives for standardisation in usage of the IPA and Unicode. At soundcomparisons.com, users can explore the transcription datasets by phonetically-informed search and filtering, customise selections of languages and words, download any targeted data subset (sound files and transcriptions) and cite it through a custom URL. We present sample research applications based on our extensive coverage of regional and sociolinguistic variation within major languages, and also of endangered languages, for which Sound Comparisons provides a rapid first documentation of their diversity in phonetics. The multilingual interface and user-friendly, ‘hover-tohear’ maps likewise constitute an outreach tool, where speakers can instantaneously hear and compare the phonetic diversity and relationships of their native languages