Alberta 1

Listen to Alberta 1, a 42-year-old man from Cardston, Alberta, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 42

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1964

PLACE OF BIRTH: Cardston, AB, Canada

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Blackfoot

OCCUPATION: case manager at a university

EDUCATION: master’s degree in education

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was living in Lethbridge, Alberta, at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker is bilingual (Blackfoot and English) and grew up speaking both.

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

RECORDED BY: Tanera Marshall

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/07/2006

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

We’re kind of like at a transition program for the first-year university aboriginal students.  Uh, the retention rate’s really down for aboriginal students and our program brought U of L retention rates from 33 percent to 92.  Now we, we only had, uh, we thought we’d only get 30 students; we got like 60 applicants.  I’ve been busy just more or less, um, case-advising with a little extra.  And the whole basis of the, um, what do you call it, the case counseling system is based on, um, aboriginal, um, upbringing.  It’s nothing new.  It’s old.  And, uh, you know like, uh, when a, when a child walks across a ca-, an encampment and kicks a dog or throws a rock at a dog, and the first person closest to him will come and scold the child, and that’s allowed?  Or give him direction, and how they scold a child by giving him a story about why they shouldn’t do, you know.  And then they end up, every time they do something bad in the past a child would end up having a lot more than just getting scolded, they will get talk; they will get, uh, they will get, what do you call it a, a great big, long lecture.  And they use a lot of stories, and the basis of, uh, all our Blackfoot history’s on Scarface.  It’s a long story, but it’s a story with sub-stories:  the first medicine bundle, the first, uh, beaver bundle, the, uh, first medicine pipe.  You know, everything extends from this one story.  So what happens is, um, we, we’re basically using that concept to … There, there’s a transition program we heard all across Canada, eh?  They’re trying to turn native students into white students so they can survive in the city.  We turned it around.  We’re turning Indian students into Indian students, and use those strengths to survive anywhere.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lynn Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject shows the following features: husk in voice; hard R; and faster rate of speech.

COMMENTARY BY: Tanera Marshall

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/07/2006

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).

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