Australia 41

Listen to Australia 41, a 65-year-old man from Mount Magnet, Western Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 65

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/07/1958

PLACE OF BIRTH: Mount Magnet, Western Australia

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Australian/White (Scottish, English, Swedish, French Canadian)

OCCUPATION: invasive-species manager and ex-pastoralist

EDUCATION: completed high school

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

The subject has never lived outside Western Australia. (He has lived just north of Perth since 2013.)

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: none

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

RECORDED BY: Debbie Dowden

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/09/2023

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Mount Magnet. Uh, Wondinong Station, Mount Magnet. Uh, childhood: did distance education up ’til year seven, then went away to boarding school for five years at Guildford Grammar, and then came back, worked on the station. Stayed on the station until 2013, did odd jobs ’round the place, working for different people, but, um, yeah. Mainly stayed on the station and just worked off the station every now and again. …

Of where we were, the Aboriginal people that actually worked on the station were more from the Meekatharra area, like Johnny Cloanga [spelling?]; he was a Karalundi kid. So, um, yeah, we had some Badimaya, but some outta that Meekatharra area. …

Burradyini, Mulyabraya, Murbla, um, what else we got? You’ve got the Wirra — Wirra Wirra Lake, um, Yarlu, Yamadyi [=man]; yeah, there’s, Nyundi [=tail], so, a few different ones. Uh, windmill names mainly, yeah. Windmill and paddock names. …

You’d go to Magnet, and there’d be, there’d be the White kids, there’d be the Aboriginal kids; you just, um, all fitted in together, all spoke a bit of different language; they taught us a bit of theirs, and they knew a bit of ours …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Rhea Dowden

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/09/2023

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This is an excellent example of flattening of the triphthong in “tower,” “hour,” etc.

Transcriptions of windmill and paddock names are approximate, as they are not from languages with standardized writing systems.

COMMENTARY BY: Rhea Dowden

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/09/2023

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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