Florida 12

Listen to Florida 12, a 22-year-old man from Pensacola, Florida, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 29/10/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pensacola, Florida

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION:

The subject graduated high school and has had some college experience.

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The speaker lived in New York City, in Brooklyn, from ages 1 to 2, and in Atlanta from roughly ages 6 to 9. The rest of his years have been spent in Pensacola.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker has had training in a couple of different accents/dialects (RP and Berlin) but has never studied a General American dialect.

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

RECORDED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/03/2015

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 raised in Pensacola, Florida, and I have lived here for, I’d say, around 15 to 16 of the 22 years I’ve been alive. Um, I took a trip recently with my girlfriend to New York for three days during spring break, and it was quite exciting. Uh, we went to, um, a hotel — the Ameritania Hotel — in Times Square, which is nice, but we did not expect it to be so small. It’s apparently called a micro-hotel, which means it’s like a studio apartment’s slightly bigger cousin. And it was, it was still a very nice micro-hotel, but it was just that, a micro-hotel. And the shower was interesting because it was like a, a big, nice shower that, you know, it’s just like it’s raining on you, but there was no door to the shower. It was just wide open, which seems like a a design flaw, I would say. But hey, I mean maybe that’s how it is in New York. We went to several different stores, spent maybe a little bit more money than we should have shopping. But, hey, you live once. Um, we went to see On the Town, the Broadway revival of On the Town, which was fantastic. There was a lot of great dancing, really good singing. Um, it was a fantastic show. We sat in the front row mezzanine, which is actually a very good, very good seats. Some would say better than orchestra seats. And we also saw A Gentleman’s Guide to Love and Murder, which recently won the Tony for Best Musical, and it was fantastic! I’m actually going to sing a song from it in my BA Voice class recently. Not recently, soon. Soon and very soon. Uh, we also went to a restaurant called Ellen’s Stardust Diner a couple times, which is a kind of ’50s dive place, and the workers, um, the waitresses and the waiters and the waitstaff just in general will serve you food and also sing show tunes to you, or pop tunes. And they’re all very good. They’re very good. And most of them are aspiring Broadway babies, and many of them have actually gone on to be in several Broadway productions, and I think that’s really cool.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/05/2015

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This speaker has a relatively neutral speech pattern for someone who has lived in this region for so long.  There are a few instances of strong rhoticity, but not many.  Many of the typical vowel and diphthong shifts for a Pensacola speaker are not very noticeable — or absent altogether — in this speaker.  Older generations within the area do tend to have a stronger accent, and it is markedly different in younger generations.

Also, in the scripted portion of the recording, I observe that the speaker uses an even more “standardized” quality of speech, perhaps unconsciously self-correcting.  The unscripted portion is a bit looser and more reflective of his typical speech pattern.

The speaker also has a pattern of vocal fry, particularly at the ends of his sentences.  Sometimes, while speaking at the bottom of his pitch range, whole thoughts or sentences have an element of vocal fry.

COMMENTARY BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/05/2015

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.