Germany 1

Listen to Germany 1, a 24-year-old woman from Hamburg, Germany. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 24

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1975

PLACE OF BIRTH: Hamburg, Germany

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: German (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: university

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

She has lived in Kiel, Germany, and spent her last year of high school in Ohio, United States.  She was recorded in Lawrence, Kansas, United States.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her parents are both English teachers.

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): 1999

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’m from Germany, from Hamburg; that’s a city in the north, and I’m, I actually live in a suburbs, which is a little bit outside of Hamburg, but it only takes like 20 minutes by car to be right downtown, so, uh, it’s really nice because we are more out in the green; we’re not like, right in the city, but we have all the advantages of a big city too. And um, gosh, um, I grew up, I have a sister, a younger sister, and, um, we grew up, grew up in, in a nice neighborhood, a lot of children, and, um, small schools, and it was really like, like you imagine it [laughs] in the best way. My parents are both English teachers in high school, so they actually tried to speak English to us, even before we had to take it in school, but, um, we didn’t really catch on, we, we didn’t like that [laughs] so, um, I think really which I started in fifth grade, in high school, and, um, I had to take it all the way for high school, we have 13 years, and, um, I actually, oh gosh, I think, yeah, I think my senior year in high school, I, um, spent in Ohio, in United States. And I think that’s the first time I really, really learned, how to speak it. Just like, when you have to talk to people, and you’re exposed to it 24 hours a day, without any Germans around [laughs] that’s like, that’s when you have to … really speak it. I think the most difficult is just, certain way to same something, like idioms or, em, what person use, um, that’s, just stuff you, you use normally, and, um, we, we, e have different words, we just use truly different words, words in Germany to, um, to say the same thing, it’s just a different. And, um, also, um, prepositions are really hard [laughs]; there are so many, and, um, it’s kind of hard to know which preposition goes with what word. And um, I think the “th” is hard to, because we don’t have that sound in Germany. You have different “R’s,” that’s hard [laughs]. And, um, then, sometimes my, my, um, “v” isn’t very good, people tell me that, to work on that, and I lived in Kiel for 2 years that’s my home univ- kind of my, first university, and, um, then I decided to go back to Hamburg. It was kind of right after high school; I decided I would like to move out and see something new and, um, go to a smaller university than the University of Hamburg; and after two or two and a half years I decided, OK, that’s it, that’s fine; I gonna go back home.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/03/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in the accent, please see my instruction manual at www.paulmeier.com. As the speaker in this sample is a unique individual, it is highly unlikely that she will conform to my analysis in every detail. But you will find it interesting and instructive to notice which of my “signature sounds” and “additional features” (always suggested only as commonly heard features of the accent) are widely used by most speakers of the accent, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/11/2016

The archive provides:

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• 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).

 

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