England 45

Listen to England 45, a 21-year-old woman from Barnstaple, Devon, in southwest England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1980

PLACE OF BIRTH: St. Alban’s, Hertfordshire (but raised in Devon)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: adventure tourism

EDUCATION: BS degree in Adventure Tourism Management

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

The subject was raised in Barnstaple, a small town on the north Devon coast, and travels all over the world.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Micha Espinosa

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 2002

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’m from Devon in England, and I’m 21. I’ve just finished at uni, and I did a bachelor of science degree in Adventure Tourism Management. So basically it was all about, like, outdoor education and tourism, business management, and how to run your own outdoor pursuits centre. *Basically went there just to play, because I figured it was good way of getting a degree and I got to go sailing and kayaking and climbing, and all that kind of stuff. *To finance that, I worked as a pool lifeguard at the weekends at my local leisure centre, and during the summer months I work as a beach lifeguard on my local beach. I basically decided to come to New Zealand because it’s the adventure-tourism capital of the world, so I came here, again, just to play really, and do stupid stuff. Um, there are so many opportunities here, like bungee-jumping and skydiving and stuff, and the kind of things I’d really like to get into. Also, because of my degree, I’m hoping to get some kind of relevant job, maybe career opportunities out of it. So far we flew into Auckland about two months ago. We went up to Warkworth and did some fruit picking and worked in a winery, to get some money and chill out. Then went up to Whangaroa and met a guy with a catamaran who took us sailing for a couple of weeks, up all round the Bay of Islands into little secluded bays and stuff, which was well cool. We were able to explore places where there wasn’t pff pretty much no one else on the island but waterfalls and clear blue waters. Wicked. Um, and he dropped us off at Paihia. I didn’t really like it, it was too commercial. So we moved over to Russell for Christmas and the New Year’s. Got a job at the local caravan site and just earned some money and sort of got into the whole family lifestyle here, and all the locals, and it’s very quaint and really like it. Now I’m leaving. I’m going to do my Advanced Open-water Diving, um, over the next couple of days. And then on Sunday I’m going sailing again for a couple of weeks. Then I’m getting a hire car from Auckland with a couple of friends, and we’ve got it for six weeks, and we’re gonna drive round the Coromandel Peninsula, Taupo, and basically the rest of the North Island, ’cause I haven’t been anywhere south of Auckland. So I’m going to go camping, and just relax. I’m hoping to be in Queenstown by April, because I want work at the winter season. Um, anything in a ski resort there. Basically I’ll do anything. I just want to ski lots and go snowboarding. Um, then I’m gonna leave in about November, so I’ve been here a year. And then I’m going to spend six months travelling back through through Australia, Fiji, and LA. When I get home I have no idea what I’m going to do. I’m probably going to panic. I might go back to uni. I might go travelling again. I really don’t know. Eventually though I hope to go into the RAF, Navy, or the Coastguard Search and Rescue, maybe even Mountain Rescue.
[* = vocalic pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/08/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Being in her twenties, she shows how different the dialect of her generation is from the older generation, exhibiting none of the r-coloration associated with Devon. The Canadian rising vowel of “fine,” “time,” “like,” etc., is all that remains of the traditional English West Country dialect. She interestingly substitutes “f” for “th” in words like “fourth,” a feature more associated with the London dialect. For more information on British dialects, visit PaulMeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 2002

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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