General Audiobook Demo - 3 excerpts, multiple accents
Description
Vocal Characteristics
Language
EnglishVoice Age
Young Adult (18-35)Accents
British (General) French (General) Irish (General)Transcript
Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
excerpt from A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett. You look rather cross, Sarah, she said. I am sorry. You do not like the idea of learning French. I am very fond of it, answered Sarah, thinking she would try again. But you must not say Pat when you're told to do things, said Miss Minchin. Look at your book again. And Sarah did so and did not smile. Even when she found that lovefest meant the sun and love. Frail meant the brother. When Monsieur de Fouls comes, she thought, I can make him understand. Mr. Default arrived very shortly afterward. He was a very nice, intelligent, middle aged Frenchman, and he looked interested when his eyes fell upon Sarah, trying politely to seem absorbed in her little book of phrases. Is this any people for me, madam, he said to Miss Minchin. I hope that is my good fortune. Her papa, Captain Crewe, is very anxious that she should begin the language, but I am afraid she has a childish prejudice against it. She does not seem to wish to learn, said Miss Minchin. I am sorry of that, mademoiselle, he said kindly to Sarah. Perhaps when we begin to study together, I may show you that it is a charming tongue. Little Sarah Rose in her seat. She was beginning to feel rather desperate, as if she were almost in disgrace. She looked up into Mr Dufault, his face with her big green grey eyes, and they were quite innocently appealing. She knew that he would understand. As soon as she spoke, she began to explain, quite simply and pretty and fluent French, Madam had not understood. She had not learned French, exactly not out of books, but her papa and other people had always spoken it to her, and she had read it and written it as she had read and written English. Her papa loved it, and she loved it because he did. Her dear mama, who had died when she was born, had been French. She would be glad to learn anything Monsieur would teach her. But what she had tried to explain to Madam was that she already knew the phrases in this book, and she held out the little book of phrases. When she began to speak, Miss Minchin started quite violently and sat staring at her over her eyeglasses, almost indignantly until she had finished, Monsieur Defaults began to smile, and his smile was one of great pleasure to hear this pretty childish voice speaking his own language so simply and charmingly made him feel almost as if he were in his native land, which in dark, foggy days in London sometimes seemed worlds away. When she had finished, he took the phrase book from her with a look, almost affectionate, but he spoke to Miss Minchin. Ah, madam, he said. There is not much I can teach her. She has not learned French. She is French. Accent is exquisite. Excerpt from The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. I do not quite understand you, replied Franz. Pray, explain your meaning for you. Excite my curiosity to the highest pitch. Listen, said the count and deep hatred mounted to his face as the blood would to the face of any other. If a man had, by unheard of and excruciating tortures destroyed your father, your mother, your betrothed, a being who, when torn from you, left a desolation, a wound that never closes in your breast. Do you think the reparation that society gives you is sufficient when it inter poses the knife of the guillotine between the base of the occipital and the trapezius muscles of the murderer, and allows him who has caused us years of moral sufferings, to escape with a few moments of physical pain. Yes, I know, said Franz. That human justice is insufficient to console us. She can give blood in return for blood. That is all. But you must demand from her only what is in her power to grant. I will put another case to you. Continued the count that where society attacked by the death of a person avenges death by death. But are there not 1000 tortures by which a man may be made to suffer without society taking the least cognizance of them or offering him even the insufficient means of vengeance, of which we have just spoken? Are there not crimes for which the impalement of the Turks, the augers of the Persians, the steak and the brand of the Euro Coy Indians are inadequate tortures and which are unpunished by society? Answer me. Do not these crimes exist? Yes, answered Franz. And it is to punish them. The duelling is tolerated. Oh, Duelling cried the count a pleasant manner upon my soul of arriving at your end. When that end is vengeance. A man has carried off your mistress. A man has seduced your wife. A man has dishonoured your daughter. He has rendered the whole life of one who had the right to expect from heaven That portion of happiness God has promised to every one of his creatures and existence of misery and infamy. And you think you are avenged because you send a ball through the head Or pass a sword through the breast of that man who has planted madness in your brain and despair in your heart. And remember, moreover, that it is often he who comes off victorious from the strife, absolved of all crime in the eyes of the world? No, no, continued the count had I to avenge myself. It is not. Thus I would take revenge. Excerpt from Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson All the crew respected and even obeyed him. Get a way of talking to each doing everybody some particular service to me. He was in weirdly kind and always glad to see me in the galley, which he kept as clean as a new pin. The dish is hanging up burnished and his parrot in a cage in one corner come away organs, he would say. Come and have a yarn with John, Nobody more welcome than yourself, my son. Such a town. And hear the news. Here's Captain Flint, a course of heroic Captain Flint after the famous Buccaneer. Here's Captain Flint predicting, sexist to her voyage. Wasn't you, captain? And the parent would say with great rapidity, pieces of eight pieces of eight pieces of eight until you wonder that it was not our breath until John through his handkerchief over the cage. ID at Bard, he would say, is maybe 200 years old. Hawkins. They live forever, mostly. And if anybody's seen more wickedness, it must be the table himself, she said. With England the Great Carp in England, the pirate she's been at Madagascar and at Malabar and Sara, Nome and Providence and Porto Bello. She was the fishing up of the wrecked plate ships. It's there, she learned pieces of eight and Little Wonder 352,000 of them. Hawkins. She was at the bargain of the very sorry of the Indy, said Go she was. I want to look at her. You would think she was a baby. What It smelled. Powder didn't just happen. Stand by to go about. Parrot would scream. Ah, she's a handsome craft. She has the cook would say and give a sugar from his pocket. And then the bird would pick at the bars and swear straight on passing belief for wickedness. There, John would add, You can't touch PETA. Norby Marks, lad, here is this poor old innocent bird mind swearing, blue fire and none the wiser. You may later that she would swear to see him in a manner of speaking before Chaplain and John would touch his forehead with a solemn way he had that made me think he was the best of men.