England 2

Listen to England 2, a woman in her 20s. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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Note: This subject is also listed as Northern Ireland 4 because of her unique background.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Hong Kong, China

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject lived in Hong Kong only until age 1, and then lived in Bahrain for four years, Antigua for three years, and St. Lucia for a brief time before attending boarding school in England while living with her parents in Florida, United States, and Sweden during breaks. She then moved to Londonderry, Northern Ireland, at age 11.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has Irish parents.

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

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 1999

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 Hong Kong. Um, I lived there for a year, so I don’t remember anything about it. I then moved to Bahrain in the Middle East, for, four years. Then I moved to Antigua in the West Indies for three years; um, then I moved to St. Lucia, which is also in the West Indies; that was very short. Then, I moved to Florida, in the United States, lived there for a while whilst attending boarding school in southern England. My home was in Florida. Um, did that for, um, also in Sweden (my Dad lived in Sweden, and I attended boarding school in England), and then at the age of 11, I moved to Northern Ireland and have lived there ever since. Um, well my parents are both Irish and they were raised in Londonderry, which is like the second principle town in northern Ireland and, um, they wanted to like settle back down and stop travelling so much. So, um, it didn’t worked out as planned, my mum moved back, but my dad still had to like stay in Sweden and America, and we went out there on holidays and he came back for holidays. And, um I got teased a lot for because of my accent, because I was Irish, but I had this very posh accent, used to be much, much posher. I like, adapted it very quickly, because I sounded so out of place. And it was also very weird because of um, the troubles, the terrorism. Um, [unclear] when I was in boarding school we were marched down to the church once a week, and forced to stand behind the religious teacher, who had an awful voice, like a cat wailing, and sing hymns, and she would watch us and make sure we sang along, um, and once I moved to Northern Ireland, I just gave up going to church, because I thought it was boring, but my friends, not even my friends, uh, the people at my school said, um, “Are you Church of England, or what?” And I said “Oh yeah, I went to Church of England.” And they were like “OK, well you’re a Protestant then, so we can, we can hang around with you, we can speak with you,” which knocked me for six, and so I was always known as the girl who didn’t have any hang-ups.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Luzar

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: 

For more information on British and Irish dialects, visit PaulMeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Cameron  Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/06/2024

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• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
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