Alaska 5

Listen to Alaska 5, a 20-year-old man from Wasilla, Alaska, United States. 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): 20/01/2005

PLACE OF BIRTH: New York City, New York (but raised in Alaska)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: White

OCCUPATION: college student

EDUCATION: high school diploma

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

The subject had been living in Blacksburg, Virginia, as a student for nearly two school years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject moved to Alaska at a young age. His mother is American and his father British, leading to an inability to pronounce certain vowels (resolved in elementary school), a lisp (resolved in middle school), and a voice that developed largely from peers at school over a longer period of time. Many of said peers have Yup’ik or Inupiat ancestry or are descended from longtime Matanuska Valley homesteaders once hailing from the Upper Midwest. The subject is also a news anchor at a local radio station and has practiced speaking more clearly for some time.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/02/2025

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 found this website to be rather interesting because I have recently traveled across the country for college and grown quite surprised as to how different I sound compared to others, especially others my age. A lot of people hear me for only a small amount of time before asking where I am from; many assume it is a foreign country. More than one has assumed Canada, though you would be surprised as to how many guys here are convinced Alaska is actually part of Canada and not the United States. The American education system at its finest, I tell you.

I suppose there are two different reasons for this. One is that many of the original colonists of the Matanuska-Susitna Valley, where I reside, came from the Upper Midwest, especially places like Minnesota and Wisconsin where the Scandinavian influence was strong. But over these generations, it has likely evolved on its own track because of Alaska Native influences. This holds true for me firsthand as well because a great deal of my friends are Yup’ik and Inupiat. When you combine all this, you wind up with long O’s everywhere, short E’s that sound like A’s, and a terse but sing-songy quality to the voice.

The other is a little bit more subtle. It is about fillers. There tends to be a much higher propensity for people here in Virginia, especially in my classes, to place words such as “like,” “kinda,” and “y’know” in between every pause of a sentence. I will point out that even though this is Southwest Virginia, most students here come from the Washington D.C. metro area and are not representative of Appalachian English speakers whatsoever.

Speaking of which, I have definitely picked up on a bit of Appalachian vocabulary. The correct pronunciation of Appalachia, for one, but I will occasionally find myself saying “holler,” “yonder,” “warsh the dishes,” and “plumb crazy.” Anyway, in Alaska, many people I know tend to speak more slowly and take much more deliberate silent pauses in their sentences, or sometimes none at all if they have thought over what they are going to say before saying it. I am not sure whether this is just pure coincidence and the phenomenon of “like” is just a generational thing across the country and I just sound like a 40-year premature boomer, but I la- like my lack of likes because it makes me sound more assertive.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/02/2025

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

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

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.