Illinois 6

Listen to Illinois 6, an 18-year-old man from Ravenswood, 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: 18

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ravenswood, Illinois

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian (Italian)

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: When recorded, the subject was a full-time college student.

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

The subject lived in Buffalo, New York, for two and a half years during elementary school and then then moved back to the north side of Chicago.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Eric Armstrong and Shawn M. Muller

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

When I was about 5 years old I, um, I always used to like Flintstone vitamins. So my, um, my parents, they would always keep it on top of a cabinet, and they, they always told me take one vitamin, but I would always take, y’know, one or maybe two time, y’know, two times a day I would take it. And one day I just got up there and I saw a bottle and, they put it up real high, when I just went up there and I took the whole bottle. My sister caught me taking ’em and she told my parents and I went to go hide under a couch, ’cause I was t- … ’cause I was, y’know, scared ’cause I knew it was something bad because I was, I was warned not to take more than one, but I would always y’know [unclear] when I finally succeeded to take the whole bottle. So my sister went and told my parents and they said that they were going to take me to hospital. So they called the the hospital and said that I overdosed and they said “Well, ask him if he sees stars or feels any dizzy … feels any drowsiness.” And I said “No, I feel fine.” So when I, they go, “Oh, oh we’re going to have to take you in.” And I, I went to the doctor, to the hospital, emergency room, and they gave me this liquid to drink. And, it was like a gold like type of drink and soon as it hit the back of my throat I just vomited right away, and, and they told me to drink the whole thing. I could not drink the whole thing. I just drank little bit of it. They kept telling me to drink a little more; they had to get it all the iron out of my system. That’s why I had to go in for the hos-, to the hospital ’cause of the iron is in my system. My family, my father’s from Sicily and he came to America about twenty-five years ago. He was about 17. And, um, my mother, she was born in Buffalo, New York. The, the neighborhood I grew up in, I was born here in Chicago on the north side, and I live on Damon and Lawrence in Ravenswood area. My family’s very large, and my my mother has family in Buffalo, New York, and in R-Romes, Rome, Italy, and Kansas City as well, but my father has lots of family in Brazil. There’s, we have sixty-three cousins in Brazil and family in London. We have, we have ’bout twenty-five people ‘n that live in London, and the rest live, mostly his brothers and sisters a- … all live here. Most of his cousins live out there. I lived in Buffalo, New York, for two, two and a half years when I was in second and third and fourth grade, and I moved back t- here in Chicago same same neighborhood.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2006

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This full-time student’s speech features the very “flat” sound that characterizes the American Midwest. Similar “flattened” sounds can be heard in other Northern cities, such as Detroit, Michigan, and Buffalo, New York.

COMMENTARY BY: Eric Armstrong and Shawn M. Muller

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.