England 57

Listen to England 57, a 52-year-old man from Leeds and Halifax, West Yorkshire, England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 52

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1951

PLACE OF BIRTH: Leeds, West Yorkshire

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: self-employed plumber

EDUCATION: N/A

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

The subject lived in London for a short time in early adulthood and then moved back to live and work in Halifax, where he has been ever since.

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): 01/2004

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, I were born in Leeds, which is in West Yorkshire.  Uh, and brought up all around, all around there; umm, see I did my qualification and schooling in Leeds, and then I went on to study.  Uhh, I moved to London for a short time to study, uhh, and then I moved back up, soo I didn’t like living down there.  So I moved back up into Yorkshire, uhh, and I live out in Halifax, now.  Uhhhm, since I’ve lived here, I’ve started my own business.  I run a shop; me hobbies is my allotment, me pen, doing my digging, umm, cricket, umm, and various other forms of sport.  Umm, I enjoy doing my job; I get my hands a bit mucky like now and then, but what can you do; well, that’s that’s how I make my living.  Today I got called out to a job because there were water coming through the ceiling, so I got out there, and, uhh, a chap had been putting his carpet down, had fastened his carpet down with some tack to the edge and put one of the tack through the pipe.  So, chap and then instead of just leaving it, he phoned me to say, he pulled the tack out, and of course water fi- poured through ceiling, which I been up and done the repair on today like for him.  Soo, ya know there is various sort of things that happen like, uh, we do down at cricket, uhh, local cricket club there, uh, down there last night and that we-well we things happen that just make you laugh-like.  I mean, we finished up last night out on, we’re on Hillside with pieces of cardboard at half past – we were waiting for snow – so we got out last night about half past 11 this was, after we had been have a few beers, getting this hill down from club; so we got some old cardboard boxes, and we sat in our cardboard boxes, and we were sledging down the hill in cardboard boxes at half-11 last night and we were [laughter].  And that was all right was that, yeah.  You know were looking at one job, we’re walking, umm, the, they been doing the house up and I (won’t) wasn’t supposed to be walking up on’t loft, and the chap, the chap knows me, he’s got a great sense of humor, but his new girlfriend, she didn’t know me at all.  She didn’t, she, uh, have a sense of humor at all.  And I walk in on to top of joist up at loft, and, uh, he was they were downstairs.  I was trying to get across to see where cold water tank ere and to see in the loft there.  And my foot slipped off of joist, went straight through the ceiling [laughter]; he just looked up at me and then fell over his wife say “uhh ahh [through laughter] my foot was hanging down through the ceiling.”  I said, “See if thou can get a lamp shade to match that love, I says.”  [laughter]  She, she didn’t have much of a sense of humor at all, though.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lara Thomas

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/02/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject speaks of his hobbies (his “allotment,” a small vegetable garden usually leased from the local authority; and cricket). He speaks amusingly of various clients he has encountered in the course of his work. You will notice that his accent in the reading is quite conservative, though in the unscripted conversation he relaxes considerably and his speech is more natural and idiomatic, with quite a strong accent. To learn more about the Yorkshire dialect, visit PaulMeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/2004

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.