Ghana 1

Listen to Ghana 1, a 20-year-old man from Ghana. 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): 1983

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ghana

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Subject was born and raised in Ghana (exact ethnicity unknown).

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: Subject gives no information other than he is a student.

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

Subject mentions no place other than Ghana.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject mentions preparatory school, which he describes as “more of a private school,” indicating he was probably well educated as a youth. However, he has a strong accent.

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

RECORDED BY: Eric Armstrong

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/2003

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um so I, I think I was about 10 years old, right and I went to a preparatory school, more of a private school, this happened in Ghana, it was more of a private school and in the morning when your parents drop you off, because your parents like have to go to work or whatever, depending on what time your parents dropped you off before classes started, we had, they had this library thing–so your parents drop you walk like to the, it was towards the, like the head office, the main office but – and the main office was right in front of the school–so you walk to the main office and you’re directed into like a big reading room where like all the students, normally the kids, um, sit and read books till it was time to start classes and we hated it. We hated doing that and there was a wall around our school because our school was like right by the road side and my dad dropped me off and when he took off instead of going in,  I didn’t go inside, I went right with some friends. We’re walking right by the wall and there was this really sharp curve right beside the wall and we’re talking and eating our lunch which we are supposed to wait and well I was the one closest to the road and I was like talking and looking back at my friends and the next thing I heard was one, um, of my friends, Solomon, he’s like Ben watch out there’s a car coming and before I could turn my head to see the car, I got knocked right into the wall by the car bomb, and I fell, um, I didn’t feel I was seriously hurt so when I got up, I wanted to run and I started running and they were chasing after me and they grabbed me and like we have to take you to the hospital and I’m like there’s nothing wrong with me because I was more worried about my dad finding out – I’ll get into shit, right, so I’m like, no, I’m fine. I, I need to go; I need to go to school, um, they wouldn’t listen so they took me to the hospital and, um, they called my dad but I was fine so they did a whole checkup thing and they said I was fine but a week after I started having these really, really bad migraines like half of my head was like, in like, I couldn’t think straight like it was hurting really bad and, um, I didn’t want to tell my dad because he was already really, really pissed off at me so I went through about two weeks with this like, really bad headache going on and finally I told my mom and my mom was really pissed. I went to the hospital and they had to go do some, likes, CAT scans or whatever it was because they couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me and everyone was freaking out and because everyone was freaking out, I was freaking out because my brothers, my older brothers were saying you’re going to go insane, you’re going to go insane, they, they were teasing me that I had like this tumor in my head and it was spreading because it kept on getting worse and worse as time went on–and they were, like, it’s spreading and you’re going to get, like,  you’re going to get mad, you’re going to get crazy so you just watch and I started, I, I think to myself a lot so I’m thinking to myself and talking to myself and that kind of thing and them saying I was going to get mad and everything, like, I actually started believing I was getting crazy. I started becoming really quiet but then after the CAT scans and everything they said it was, it was nothing major, um, I don’t remember what they said but I was given like a lot of medications to take for awhile and after awhile things got better but, yeah, whenever I, I think, yeah it, it’s one of those memories that come back because I remember when I went back to school – I was out of school – like I didn’t go to school for about two or three weeks and when I went back to school there was this thing, write,  written on the board, it’s like, Ben was hit by a car for skipping library on the, the, and the date was right there. So yeah, that was a story. It was scary, really scary.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Phil Hubbard

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/08/2008

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.