England 96

Listen to England 96, a 20-year-old woman from Gloucester, in southwest England, who has also spent time in Wales. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/08/1994

PLACE OF BIRTH: Chalford, Gloucester

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: two years of college

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was born and raised until age 7 in Gloucester. She then moved to Norton, Presteigne, Powys, Wales, where she was living at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

In the recording, the subject speaks of the possible influence of her mother’s Liverpool origins and of the border Welsh she has been surrounded by since age 7. She doesn’t believe that either has played a significant role in shaping her dialect.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/02/2015

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in Chalford in Gloucester. Um, we moved to Wales when I was 7. Um, I attended a Welsh-speaking school where Welsh was compulsory, um, but in the area not many people speak Welsh, but it was still a lesson we had to learn. Um, and then I left school at the age of 11 or 12, went to secondary school; um, was there ’til I was 16 and then to college where I studied history, photography, French, and, um — what was the other one? — and English. Um, then I decided to go university in Swansea, um, where I study American studies. Um, I have, I’m very fond of voice acting, um, even though I study quite atypical, like, history/literature course. I’ve always wanted to do voice acting and cartoon animation, um, and doing this course I wanted to see where it would take me and see what I could learn as well. Um, OK, so I have two brothers and two sisters, mum and dad; um, I’m the middle child, so I have an older brother, older sister, younger brother, younger sister.

I’d like to talk about my accent, um, as in, like, in explain, explain it. I guess I pronounce things, um, like, as in comparison to my friends, they’ll say, some will say “bath” or “grass,” whereas I say “bath” and “grass.” Um, um, my parents’ accents are, well, I would say I don’t really notice a difference in mine and theirs, except I think my mum can sometimes break out into like a Scouse accent sometimes, um, and I think my dad – I never really noticed an accent except for what like I sounds like, um, but, yeah, and think the same with the rest of us; um, so my older brother, I think, because he goes to Bangor in Wales; he speaks fluent Welsh, so he sometimes has like a Welsh twang in some things he says, but I think the rest of us have got, my older, my older sister and younger brother go to Bristol University, so I’m not sure if they’ve picked up back any kind of, I don’t know, Bristol accents or anything. I’m not sure, but, just, yeah, sounds kind of similar to mine, I thought.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/02/2015

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject speaks contemporary RP with little influence from any of the vernacular accents in either Gloucester or Powys.  In contrast to the conservative RP taught at drama schools to actors (and well described in The Standard British English dialect by this author and in the Received Pronunciation Special Collection on this site),  she exhibits some interesting contemporary sounds.  For example, notice the occasional lack of lip-rounding in the GOOSE lexical set; the lack of alveolar contact for post-vocalic /l/; the occasional glottalization of final /t/; the sounding of the /g/ in /ing/ word endings; and, perhaps under the influence of her mother’s Liverpool origins, the rounding of the vowel in the STRUT lexical set.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/02/2015

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.

• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.

• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.

• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.