Illinois 27

Listen to Illinois 27, a 28-year-old woman from the north side of Chicago, Illinois, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples. IDEA is a free resource; please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 28

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/02/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Chicago, Illinois

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian (Irish, Polish, Scottish, and Hungarian ancestry)

OCCUPATION: web developer and opera singer

EDUCATION: master’s degree in music — voice performance

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

The subject lived in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, for roughly three years, where she attended graduate school.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has spent a good deal of time studying languages (Spanish, German, Italian, French, Polish, and Russian) and speaking, reading, and writing them. She also has an interest in practicing various accents. The subject studied opera performance, so she has had plenty of experience practicing singing, speaking, and acting, which she admits sometimes leads to affected speech. Indeed, she describes the dialects of actors as more “neutral” in their sound. And although she describes her own dialect as Chicago, it could be considered extremely close to General American or Standard American.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/10/2020

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 grew up in Chicago, Illinois, on the north side of the city, uh, in a neighborhood where a lot of city workers’ families lived, so, for example, um, firemen, policeman, um, those kind of things: um, so, uh, a fairly middle-class neighborhood. Um, I would say that my personal accent is definitely Chicago, but, um, it’s definitely affected because I studied many different languages, um, and I studied music and specifically opera performance, so I’m constantly fascinated by, um, peoples’ accents and how they talk and language in general. So, I think through all that. Uh, it definitely has some influence on the way that you speak, um, especially if you listen to actors talk. Um, they tend to ha-, uh, develop more neutral accents, um, throughout their — the course of their training, seems like. Um, but that’s it for, for me. I, I lived in North Carolina for three years, um, but mainly Chicago, Chicago my whole life.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/10/2020

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.