Ghana 3

Listen to Ghana 3, a 27-year-old woman from Accra, Ghana. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 27

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/06/1988

PLACE OF BIRTH: Accra, Ghana

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: black

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: college graduate

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

The speaker had been attending college in Claremont, California, in the United States, for four years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She is currently learning phonetics in school and learning a General American dialect, though it isn’t ingrained yet.

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): 10/12/2015

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, so I am 27 years old. I was born and raised in Accra, which is the capital of Ghana in West Africa. I also — I went to school there from about nursery through to, um, senior high school. Um, and then after that I, I was admitted to a university in, in the U.S.: Pomona College in Claremont, California. I have a brother and a sister. Um, my dad is a doctor, and my mom is a fashion designer. Oh, OK, so my sister — she is, she’s, she works in an insurance agency, ah, state-insurance cooperation back home. My brother, um, recently graduated from university back in Ghana, and and he works now with an oil company, um, called Ghana National Petroleum Corporation. I, I feel as though this time around — because I, I did, um, college here and then I went back home for about four years and I’m back now — but this time around feel as though I’m more ready [laughs] for the change; um, in my undergrad, I didn’t feel as if I really settled. So right now knowing that this is what I want to do with my, um, acting MFA, I feel very, um, grounded here right now. Yeah.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/01/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Sounds that would be diphthongs in Geneneral American tend to be pure; the vowel in “bowl” shifts to [o].

[r] is not hard; sometimes “r” is absent as it would be in Received Prounuciation (e.g., “letter”).

The oral posture, and in particular the jaw and tongue, are more relaxed and released downward compared to many American speakers.

Medial “t” is very precise.

[i] in the final position in a word is more open than for many Americans.

In the word “odd,” she uses the “middle o,” not drifting towards the “ah” in the word “father.”

Sometimes the stressed syllable changes to being on the final syllable (e.g., “normally” and “millionaire”).

COMMENTARY BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/01/2016

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.