Bulgaria 5

Listen to Bulgaria 5, a 43-year-old woman from Sofia, Bulgaria. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 43

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 29/01/1976

PLACE OF BIRTH: Sofia, Bulgaria

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian/Bulgarian

OCCUPATION: professor

EDUCATION: two master’s degrees

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

Beginning in her late twenties, she lived intermittently in the following places in the United States: Washington, D.C., for two years; Gainesville, Florida, for two years; New York, New York, for nine months; Middlebury, Vermont, for two years; and Ann Arbor, Michigan, for three years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/05/2019

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um [subject laughs], I was born in 1976 in Sofia, in Bulgaria. Um, I live in a beautiful, old house, ah, in a district called Lozenets. Um, the house was built by my grand-grandfather, and it was in the outskirts of the town at the time. Uh, but now it’s not. [Subject laughs.] Now there is a lot of activity around there. Um, the house has a huge terrace that I love, and there is a cherry tree that goes right over the terrace. So in May it’s, um, the best time of the year; you can pick cherries right from there. Um I, I grew up with, uh, with my mother and her parents and my, my brother. And, um, there is some lovely forest close by, so we often go there for, for walks.

Um, when I was little, I was, um, training in rhythmic gymnastics [subject laughs], and that was, uh, the national sport in Bulgaria, so every little girl’s dream was to compete with rhythmic gymnastics. [Subject laughs.] Um, I, um — yeah, at some point, I was pursuing the sport, so at some point I was in the national team and I was, uh, training very seriously. [Subject laughs.] Um, yeah, even didn’t go for sch- in school for a year or so. [Subject laughs.]

And, um, my, my mother is a physicist, and um, my brother is, is in mathematics, so he’s kind of this mathematical genius. [Subject laughs.] He now teaches in Cornell. Um, so I, I went to a, um, a physics school, and I really enjoyed that. It was kind of very nerdy and full of people like me there [subject laughs] who enjoy solving problems together. Um, and then I, I went to the university to study physics, but I was, I was in dance too, so I kept dancing on the side.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/05/2019

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

• • /l/ shifts to /w/ in many circumstances. This is not completely consistent, as in words like “seriously” where the /l/ is pronounced.

• • /h/ shifts to /x/.

• • The speaker introduces /j/ into some words, such as “headed” and “Harrison.”

• • /ð/ shifts to /d̪/.

• • /θ/ shifts to /t̪/.

• • Final voiced consonants become unvoiced in words such as “goose’s,” “huge,” and “implied.”

• • r tends to be hard or lightly rolled.

• • /ɜ˞/ becomes a diphthong, closer to /ɒɚ/, as in “confirmed.”

• • /I/ tends to shift to /i/; for example: “goose‘s” and “medicine.”

• • /oʊ/ shifts to /ɒ/; e.g., “stroking.”

• • /æ/ shifts closer to /a/ or /ɑ/; e.g., “gymnastics,” “that,” and “dance.”

• • /ʌ/ shifts to /a/; e.g., mother.

• • The speaker utilizes some stress errors, as in the word “terrace.”

COMMENTARY BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/05/2019

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 r epresented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.