England 39

Listen to England 39, a 52-year-old man from Berkshire and East and West Sussex, in southeast England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 52

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1959

PLACE OF BIRTH: Maidenhead, Berkshire

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: actor and teacher

EDUCATION: university

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

The subject moved to West Sussex at age 11 and moved to London at age 17 for one year before moving to East Sussex for three years.  He then lived in London and the United States before living in Brighton for four years and Bristol for five years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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): 2001

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, um, Maidenhead in Berkshire, so the Home Counties, and I spent, uh, eleven years there, and then I moved to a place called Steyning in ss- West Sussex, where I went to school, I moved to the coast to a place called Shoreham, which is not far from Brighton, so that’s still West Sussex. Um, and I spent my secondary school, well, I spent my time up to the age of 17, there and then I went to London for a f- year to study at university up at Chelsea College, and then I went back down to Sussex University and studied three years there; that’s in East Sussex, ahem, um, ss, ah after that I –  what did I do after that? –  I ss went back to London to do some work, and then I went to America actually for a bit of time for a bit of a holiday and, um, about, and then I went back to Brighton and spent another about four years there, and then I did some acting, um, ’round the north of England and Scotland and in Europe, and, uh, went back to Brighton again for about another four years; then after that, I moved to the West Country, and I’ve been in the West country now, in Bristol, for the last five years.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Summer Mulford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

As a trained actor and a teacher, he speaks Received Pronunciation, although the lack of lip rounding in the “goose” lexical set is interesting. If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in the accent, please see my instruction manual at PaulMeier.com. As the speaker in this sample is a unique individual, it is highly unlikely that he will conform to my analysis in every detail. But you will find it interesting and instructive to notice which of my “signature sounds” and “additional features” (always suggested only as commonly heard features of the accent) are widely used by most speakers of the accent or dialect, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 2001 (amended 05/11/2016)

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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