England 8

Listen to England 8, a 32-year-old man from Wroughton, Wiltshire (near Swindon), in southwest England. He has also spent time in London. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 32

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1967

PLACE OF BIRTH: Wroughton, Wiltshire (near Swindon)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: personal trainer, dive instructor, sports specialist

EDUCATION: N/A

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

The subject left home in his late teens and has lived in many places around the world, including London and the United States.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

His accent is a Wiltshire sound overlaid with London sounds, and now overlaid with American.

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): 03/03/2000

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 *a small village ‘n’ *called Wroughton, near Swindon, in the county of Wiltshire, in England. It’s *about an hour northwest of London. I was, I went to school there and I stayed there until I was 17, and then I left, um, the area and started traveling round the world. I *spent a lot of time in Europe, *northern Africa. And then I made my way to the Caribbean. And *I went to the Caiman Islands, and I was a divemaster there for five or six years. And then I got into the health industry and opened a health club over there, and from there I went back to England for a little while, and then I went to somewhere called the Turks and Caicos Islands, which is a group of islands south of the Bahamas and *in between Puerto Rico, the main island bein’ *Provendenciales, which is the most populated island. Then I went to the United States. Spent, I’ve been here now ov- … two years, and I own a, a personal training gym in a place called Safety Harbor, which is about twenty minutes’ drive from Tampa. And now I am here in sunny Kansas. *Grown up as a ch- … as a kid in *Wiltshire. I’ve friends with farms, so I’d spend a lot of time playin’ on the farms and the hay and stuff, and we’d go shooting quite a lot. We have, um, they had pheasants, they’d r-rear pheasants, ‘nd a couple of times a year we’d go and have pheasant shoots. And we’d feed, go and feed all the animals, feed the cows ‘n’ drive the tractors ‘n’ the combine harvesters ‘n’ do everything kinda around the farm. Um, we rode a lot o’ dirtbikes over there. And I used to race motocross for a while. I used to play a lot of squash. Um, but don’t seem to play that over here any more ’cause, um, the racquets are shorter and the, and the lines on the wall aren’t right so don’t play that over here any more. But, um, I used to play at quite a good level over there in England. I played since I was 7 years old or something, up until I was *16. I used to play rugby for the school, was a pretty keen football player, and I also used to *swim for the school, too. Was competitive swimmer for a long time. And then *a few years after that I started doing triathlon, and I’ve done, *I’ve raced, um, Olympic distance, which is *one-point-two-mile swim, twenty-six mile cycle, and *a six-mile run. And I’ve also done half Iron Man distance, which is *two miles’ swim, fifty-five-miles’ cycle, and a half marathon, which is *thirteen mile. Back in ninety-five, I did the London Marathon. Twenty-six-mile run. Nearly killed me, but I did it. We were on the north side, and we were dri-, diving on a dive site called Tarpon Alley, and *you go down the, from the boat you go down a line onto the coral reef, which is about sixty feet, and then there’s a cave openin’, an’ you go down, in through the cave, straight down to a hundred feet. And then you, and this is with my, I had six people with me, we dropped down into the cave, down to a hundred feet and then we came out onto the wall. Um, when you come out over the wall, *you see what’s called the Cayman Trench, which is a twenty-six-thousand feet deep. And as we got out onto, as we pulled out a… on, onto the wall there, um, about fifteen feet away from us, um, there was a, I think it most approximately like ten-feet-long hammerhead shark. And I, I gave the signal, *which is a hand-signal on top of your head, head like a fin *to, to show the people that I was with that there was a shark in the area, and told everybody to, to stay where they were and level off at the level they were at. And we just, we, we stayed at that level, and *the shark swam quite close by us, and it got about ten feet past where we were and it, and it turned its body and looked at us. And then it just, and then it went down, down the wall.
[* = vocalic pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

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 dialects, visit PaulMeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Cameron Meier

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

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