Australia 32

Listen to Australia 32, a 22-year-old man from Perth, Western Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/01/1993

PLACE OF BIRTH: Canberra, Australia (but raised in Perth)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian/Australian

OCCUPATION: student and personal trainer

EDUCATION:

The subject has a bachelor’s degree and was earning his master’s at the time of this interview.

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

The speaker was raised in Perth, Western Australia, and lived there until 2014, when he moved to the United States (California) for college.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Chelsea Harvey (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/03/2015

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

One of the things would definitely be how — speaking of dialects — how we announce it and what we call different objects. So it’s a bit of a difference, so that sometimes causes confusion. So, for example, when I have what you guys would call like a “sweatshirt” or a “hoodie,” I call that a “jumper.” So I would say, “Aw, yeah, I just gotta get my jumper; it’s really cold or something,” and they’d be like, “What’re you talking about?” And another big thing is the word “biscuit.” So here it refers to, like, a scone-type thing from what I understand of it. We call biscuits, like, could be, like a cookie. A cookie is a biscuit. No one’s — people say cookie, but it’s the minority rather than the majority. So that also, people are like: “Aw, man, that biscuit looks really good.” “That’s not a biscuit. What’d you mean?” And I’m like, “Yeah, all right, settle down.”

Um, what’re some other things? Uh, there’s different na- this is how’ll I’ll entertain American people when they ask me, inevitably, “So what are the biggest differences between Australia and America?” So, a couple of the things: Uh, what you guys call “peppers” — bell peppers — we call “capsicum” in Australia. Yeah, I know, weird. What you guys call “cantaloupe” we call “rock melon.” Um, what are some other weird things that are, like, completely different? Um, I guess that’s about it.

No one eats turkey in Australia. Turkey is really popular here [in the United States], like I’ve had more turkey than most Australians have had in their entire lives, in the last six months. But, um, that’s a bit of a weird difference. Um, what else? What other things? Oh! The best thing about America is you get free refills on your soft drink, like wherever you go. That doesn’t exist in Australia, except for Hungry Jack’s, which — wait for it — is what we call “Burger King” in Australia, because the name Burger King was taken by some really small, individually owned company that refused to sell that name to Burger King, and they wanted to franchise as that. So all through Australia, it’s the only country in the world, it’s called Hungry Jack’s. It’s the exact same; you have the Whopper; you have soft serve, whatever else. But I don’t know why I was talking about Burger King. But yeah, free refills.

So, being a poor student, and now having to live a real adult life out of home — which sucks ’cause I have to pay for things like insurance and stuff like I didn’t even know existed — um, means most of my meals when my friends go out for dinner is me purchasing a Diet Coke and getting about eight to ten refills. So I tell people this and they think, “That’s pretty funny; you’re exaggerating.” And then I actually have eight to ten refills and then, like, the waitress starts off like, “Can I get you another refill?” and she progressively gets more, like, angry and like less smiley ’cause she knows that I’m only gonna buy this Diet Coke. And it — oh! A huge thing: tipping. Tipping doesn’t exist in Australia. Yeah, this is totally foreign. So I hate when I have to tip, only ’cause it’s just like I’ve already paid for the meal and now I have to pay for this person’s wage, which I understand sucks for them ’cause maybe they only make their income off of tips. Um, but I’m always keen to point this out to every — oh, keen, the word “keen.” No one uses that word here. But I use it to mean, like, “I’m interested,” like “Are you interested to go to the gym?” “Are you keen to go to the gym now?” So that’s a bit of a weird thing. My roommates have fully adapted. Um, oh I say “cheers” as like “thank you.” So someone will hand me something and — “Oh, cheers.” That’s really weird here as well; cheers is only — which is still used in Australia, but to like cheers alcoholic beverages in general.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Chelsea Harvey (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/12/2015

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:

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• 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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