California 13

Listen to California 13, a 19-year-old woman from Sacramento, California, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/09/2000

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bellevue, Washington (but raised in Sacramento)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African American

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: some college

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

The subject was born in Bellevue, Washington, and lived her first four years in Sammamish, Washington.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her parents stressed academics, as well as speaking Standard American English at home.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/07/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Uh, all right, um, let’s see. So, I was born in Washington, in a place called Bellevue, um, but I was actually raised, I’m gonna say, a couple miles away, in another town called Sammamish. Um, very isolated. Um, our house was surrounded by all these big evergreen trees, and I think there were maybe only one or two houses nearby. In fact, it was so isolated, uh, we were by the sound, kind of. Um, there were lots of raccoons and wolves and deer that would just come up to the house and kind of sit on the driveway. I think one time they said, uh, there were some wolves even. I would’ve loved to see the wolves.

Um, now I live in California: very different from Washington, um, because it’s very sunny. Much warmer, all the time. Uh, much more cars, so it’s a lot louder. Uh, let’s see what else? Oh, I’ve been to Los Angeles and, uh, San Francisco, which are much bigger than the place I grew up in, but because we moved when I was so little, I don’t actually remember Washington very much; it’s just that I see a lot of pictures that my family has kept.

Uh, let’s see, uh, what else? Um, yeah, I, I don’t really hear that I have as much of an accent on the West Coast, um, you get told that, y’know, there’s the Valley Girl stereotype, but other than that, we don’t really have a “Western” thing; y’know we don’t have the Texas Western twang. Um, I get told that I pronounce some words like I’m a British person. And I guess that’s because I read a certain way, or because it was stressed that I speak extremely “standard” English, uh, extremely academic, emphasizing all my consonants and everything.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/07/2020

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:

• 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.