Florida 20

Listen to Florida 20, a 63-year-old man from Miami and other places in Florida, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 63

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/06/1955

PLACE OF BIRTH: Buffalo, New York

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: Geotechnical Engineer and Project Manager for CDM Smith in the Egypt office

EDUCATION: Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering, and Master of Engineering in Geotechnical Engineering

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

The subject grew up in Miami but has spent the majority of his life elsewhere in Florida. He’s also lived in Egypt. Here is a breakdown of where he has lived at what ages:

0-1: Buffalo, New York
1-18: Miami, Florida
18-25: Gainesville, Florida (University of Florida)
25-27: Boca Raton, Florida
27-35: Orlando, Florida
35-39: Cairo, Egypt
39-42: Cocoa Beach, Florida
42-49: Cairo, Egypt
49-57: Orlando, Florida
57-63 (Present): Cairo, Egypt

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject’s current coworkers are Egyptian, and he frequently speaks Arabic for his job. In addition, his wife is from Cuba, and he has spent a lot of time with her family over the years.

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

RECORDED BY: Sarah Maria Nichols

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Because Miami’s located near the water, there’s lots of opportunities to get out in it, and our family used to do that. I had several uncles that were career Navy men, having spent twenty years in the Navy. And they had children — young boys, kind of my age — and we all went out together. But they would take us out in these boats to go fishing early, early in the morning. One was a boat that was made out of metal, and it would have sunk in a heartbeat. It wasn’t, uh, full of Styrofoam, or it wasn’t made out of modern materials; it was actually an aluminum boat. And we went out into the Gulf Stream. And I remember several times where the motor stopped; and the winds kicked up like is so typical in Florida in the summer time, right around noontime, or a little after noon you get these huge thunderstorms coming in, w-winds kicking up, and we were in deep blue water. Deep blue. The fishing lines couldn’t even reach the bottom. Water came in ov- [sigh] over the transom. And my uncles calmly said, “Tom, start to bail.” Eh, thinkin’ nothing of it — I’m, I’m in sixth grade, so I was 12 years old, or 13 — and I start bailing. And, “Tom you gotta bail some more.” And so they put me to work. And the other cousins were with me, and they were bailing too. So they kept us busy, and the m-motor wouldn’t start. And the wind kicked up. And more problems — couldn’t steer the boat. Now one uncle gets angry at the other uncle because of not checking the spark plug, or having water in the gasoline, or something crazy like this. So now things started to get a little bit heated up. Then w – one of the uncles said, “Tom, you better put on your life jacket.” So me and the other cousins put on their life jackets. And it started to get cool, and then started to rain. So now we’re bailin’ water, it’s raining, water’s coming in over the transom, and we’re freezin’. We’re shivering, and one uncle’s yelling at the other uncle. Well, obviously I’m alive; we made it back, but I, I was so — I, I can’t tell ya how happy I was when I got back to this rickety old dock and jumped aboard land. It was a feeling I’ve never experienced before.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Sarah Maria Nichols

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/08/2018

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

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.