Colorado 7

Listen to Colorado 7, a 24-year-old woman from Fort Morgan, Colorado, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 24

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/09/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Fort Morgan, Colorado

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: massage therapist

EDUCATION: high school diploma, massage-therapy certificate, and nursing-assistant certification

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her parents were raised in Wyoming. Otherwise, she is an excellent representative of this region, as she has never spent any significant time away.

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): 12/05/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Uh, well, it’s a pretty small town. Um, when people think of Colorado, they think of mountains and skiing, um. Fort Morgan’s on the northeastern plains of Colorado, so, um, there isn’t any mountains near there. Um, it’s very flat land, um, a lot of agricultural, uh, a lot of farming, and a lot of crops near there. … I guess if you could picture farmers [laughs] — yeah, like you know how a farmer would talk, or not necessarily country, country accent not, you know, not like Tennessee or Texan but, yeah, just like a little slow, I guess, you could say [laugh]. … High school was OK. Um, our high school was very known for, uh, Glenn Miller ’cause, um, Glenn Miller did grow up in Fort Morgan; he went to high school there, so our auditorium was called the Glenn Miller Auditorium. And uh, I did — I really did like my high school. I liked where it was placed.

Um, mostly just, you know, hang out at each others’ houses, go to the movies on the weekend, you know, and sometimes — you know there wasn’t much to do in Fort Morgan, so a lot of the times over the weekend we’d, you know, travel to the bigger towns to go shopping and everything, so … Uh, Greeley, Loveland, sometimes Denver. Greeley was the closest town though to, uh, you know, where you could do something so … They had a lot more shops; they had a lot more restaurants, so we’d mostly just go shopping at the mall, um, go eat. Um, we really like going to have sushi there, since you can’t get sushi in Fort Morgan, so [laughs] …

Um, I’d say he was pretty good; he was a pretty good brother. He was um, pretty protective over me I think I — um, I remember one time we were taking swimming lessons, and, um, our instructor was like guiding us toward the deep end, and none of us had like life jackets on, and so, um, me being little and I didn’t really know what was going on, I just went ahead and followed her [laughs] into the deep end. And so my brother was taking lessons too, and he, uh, saw what was happening, and he kinda just stopped me and was like, “Go up this ladder and go over there,” so I wouldn’t, you know, go swimming into the deep end, so …

Oh, um, my brother was always the one who would make up the games. Um, after school we would play “school” [laughs]. He would be the principal, and I’d be the student, um, and he would always make me do schoolwork; and I didn’t wanna do it ’cause I just came home from school [laughs].

TRANSCRIBED BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/05/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The speaker’s overall sound is characterized in part by jaw tension throughout. Her center of resonance seems to be velar, with strong sinus resonance as well. There is occasional vocal fry toward the end of sentences or thoughts. /t/ tends to be glottalized when in the middle or end of a word, such as “veterinary,” “vet,” “foot,” and the middle /t/ in “treatment.” /d/ tends to be devoiced at the end of words, such as “land” and “Loveland.” /s/ at the end of words such as “memories” is devoiced. Note that “Colorado” is pronounced with the same vowel as “cat.” “Dog,” “God,” and “Palm” all share the same open vowel, while “lawyer” is drawn farther back. There’s no apparent “pin/pen” blending. “Mary” and “marry” share the same vowel as “hair.” The “oh” and “ooh” back vowels are both rounded in the way most closely associated with Minnesota, particularly during the interview. There’s also an occasional lilt, which can be heard particularly well in “four.”

COMMENTARY BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/05/2017

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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