England 115

Listen to England 115, a 47-year-old woman from Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 47

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/04/1974

PLACE OF BIRTH: Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White

OCCUPATION: actor

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

At the time of this recording, the subject had been living in New York City, in the United States, for the past ten years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

There are no significant influences on the subject’s speech pattern. Despite having lived in the United States for the past decade, her native dialect appears to be unchanged.

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

RECORDED BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/01/2022

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in Welwyn Garden City, which is not spelt W-E-L-L-I-N; it’s spelt W-E-L-Y — uh, s- I can’t even spell my own town — W-E-L-W-Y-N Garden City. Um, which was the second ever garden city, Letchworth being the first. Um, so a couple of, uh, folks, in the sort of twenties realized that people were needing to move out of urban places and were expanding, and so what they started doing was making places that you could commute to London to, but building them around big avenues and trees and green spaces. So they were called garden cities. And Welwyn was the second one of those two. So I was born there, at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, and I grew up there, went to school there — yeah, all of my childhood in one home, in Welwyn Garden.

I moved into London to go to drama school, um, and I lived in North London for four years, um, in Swiss Cottage, uh, where we were denizens of, uh, you know, Camden and Notting Hill a bit, but more sort of like Camden, the North End; the pubs and the clubs around there was our stomping ground, as drama students, in the nineties.

Uh, I sort of randomly moved ba — moved to Kingston, which is South London, ’cause a friend of mine, uh, got a house and needed a roommate, so I lived there for a tiny bit; and then I was out on tour, and so there was no point in having a — paying rent, and being out on a tour. And so I gave that up, and then when I came back from touring, um, I moved back in with my parents in Welwyn Garden, and then started teaching. Um, and I met my then partner, who lived in Hitchin, and I moved to Hitchin with him. And the majority of my friends had moved to Hitchin by that point in time. So Hitchin is a much nicer than Welwyn Garden; it has a bit more character; it’s an old wool town, so it has a river, and a big old church, and cobbled streets, and it’s an old town, as opposed to Welwyn Garden, which is a new town. And, yeah, Hitchin is, is very lovely and very bohemian and cool, and a lot of my friends lived there.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/01/2022

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Because the subject has trained as an actor, she delivers the story with considerable expression and with slightly more articulated consonants than she uses in everyday speech. When she switches into conversation, however, one can hear strong characteristics of a working-class and/or “Estuary” dialect. She glottalizes many medial and final Ts, drops the occasional H (as in “hospital”), and bends diphthongs such as ei, ai, and ou in the manner typical of London and other Southeast dialects. This sample is an interesting example of code-switching: When she is reading, she adopts a more formal sound, while her extemporaneous speech is more relaxed and her accent thereby more vivid.

COMMENTARY BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/01/2022

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.