England 86

Listen to England 86, a 20-year-old man from Coventry, West Midlands, England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/10/1989

PLACE OF BIRTH: Coventry, West Midlands

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

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

The subject moved to Carmarthen, Wales, at age 19.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/08/2010

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 come from Coventry, which is in the middle of Britain, kind of by Birmingham, but, um, relatively near to Stratford as well, so it’s quite nice because you’ve got the diversity of Coventry’s — a quite big city itself — but obviously Birmingham, second-largest city in Britain, is right on your doorstep. And then you’ve got fields and there’s countryside, so it’s, it’s kind of nice because you’ve got the diversity of different areas, different scenery, different things; People in Coventry talk quite fast; like I tend to find when I moved away to university that my accent slowed a lot down because other people were slower, but at home your people talk really, really quickly, and sometimes the words can just become a bit jumbled and it sounds a bit peculiar unless you’re from there. And as far as slang, I don’t think people don’t tend to use slang a lot; there’s a lot a lot of chavs, there a lot of chavs in Coventry, uh, which do cause a lot of trouble, which is kind of bad because it reflects on you as a young person ’cause everybody puts you in; there’s a lot of old people as well, so the bracket means that people, the old people put you in the bracket of young person doing bad young person, which is not always true and a bit unfair. But how can I explain this? Uh, if I could: A young delinquent hangs out on the streets, drinks beer at bus shelters, and graffitis and smokes, and just generally is nuisance, dresses in track suits and caps and likes to terrorize; well, they tend to be younger, younger children, so like, um, from the ages of about 12 anywhere up to like 19, that sort of age bracket where they’ve not got anything better to do, so they’ll just fill up the city center and drink in public and make a nuisance of themselves, but, um, there’s quite a lot to do, there it’s a nice place, they’ve recently built like a big massive shopping complex as well so that’s an Ikea; we have Ikea, which brought brings in loads and loads of new people, but it does swamp the Coventry skyline; you can see it from everywhere; yes, big blue building with a big flashing neon yellow light which we used to have these the symbol of Coventry is the three spires ’cause if the, the war and the blitz and the bombing and stuff, so those we have an old cathedral and new cathedral so, uh, but the only surviving thing from the original one was the spire so on our flag on our like emblem there’s three spires because it’s the new spire, the spire on the church, and there’s a spire on the new cathedral as well, but you can’t see that anymore; you used to be able to see it from the Coventry skyline; it’s now blocked out by Ikea and the ice-skating rink, which is next to it, which is pretty poor; it’s not as nice a view from my bedroom window, but, yeah, that’s about it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 31/08/2010

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

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

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