California 10

Listen to California 10, a 20-year-old man from Santa Rosa, California, 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): 05/11/1996

PLACE OF BIRTH: San Mateo, California

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: currently in second year of university

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

The subject was born in San Mateo, California, and spent the first three years of his life in San Bruno before moving to Santa Rosa, where he was raised for 15 years. The past year and a half have been spent largely in mid-Michigan.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

This subject is a good sample of a Northern California dialect, as his parents were also raised in Santa Rosa and San Mateo.

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

RECORDED BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/01/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Yeah, two, three. I had a cat; then we got rid of the cat, and then we got a dog, and then we got another dog. One time our dog — he was really old, and he didn’t really like our neighbor, and our neighbor didn’t like him. And like, a week before he died, he went and pooped on their porch.

Well, one of them was, like, really old, and the other one was really young, so the young one always wanted to play, but the old one was just old, so [laughter] … but they got along.

Um, I broke my arm snowboarding, but it was, like, a quarter into, like, the mountain, so I had to ride like three-quarters with a broken arm, and I fell a couple more times. Yeah. And I just walked it. And I went into the lodge, laid down, and someone came up and asked if I was OK. And then I got — went to the hospital.

We used to pretend our house was a boat, and then, like, the yard was the ocean, so … and we had a deck in, like, our back, so we thought that was like the deck of the ship and we were battling other ships. It was pretty cool. [Laughter] We played a lot of games. Not me and my, like, youngest brother. He’s 11 years younger, so we don’t — we just play basketball. I have one that’s three years younger and one that’s 11 years younger. He likes to climb trees; he’s very hyper, um, very into rock-climbing now and all the parkour and the Ninja Warrior TV show. He’s obsessed with that show. I think he’s gonna try to be on it.

I always got blamed for not doing the dishes when it was my brother’s turn to do the dishes, so we always got into arguments about that.

I had a dream I was in Jurassic Park, and I’ve had it like five times, and then I’ll see, like, the velociraptors, and we’ll go into the house and the T-Rex is coming, and then I wake up. And I know when I’m in the dream, too, and then I just wake up. It’s weird.

Uh, I only have one. He’s pretty good; he goes to bed at 9, though, so it’s kinda weird.

They met at a restaurant. My dad was the head chef, and she was a busser. Or she was a — yeah, she was a busser. And then, I know she went to Hawaii, and then he moved to Hawaii after, like a year later. He doesn’t say why. She thinks she — he followed him. But, um, I know my littlest brother — er, not my littlest, the brother that was three years younger than me hated the cat, so I think that’s why we got rid of it, and gave it to my grandpa. So we still saw him, but he didn’t live with us.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Carlisle Shelson

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/02/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject demonstrates some characteristic Northern California sounds. Note the openness, lack of rounding, and uniformity of the vowels in “dog,” “office,” “odd,” and “cost.” This vowel is also used in his thinking sound, “um.” The word “goose” demonstrates a “fronted /u:/,” a pattern of bringing back vowels toward the front of the mouth. It can also be heard in “boat” and “ocean.” There is vocal fry throughout, particularly toward the ends of sentences, or in moments of thought and uncertainty (“cure,” “another dog,” “the old one was just old,” and “asked if I was OK”). The interview section has some examples of “uptalk” (raising the inflection at the ends of sentences, so that statements become questions), and he occasionally uses the word “like,” but neither is so predominant as to be stereotypical.  This individual is soft spoken, speaks briskly, and has incredibly bright resonance, but none of those should be taken as regional characteristics.

COMMENTARY BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/02/2017

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.