Iowa 2

Listen to Iowa 2, a 53-year-old woman from Osage and Belmond, Iowa, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 53

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1955

PLACE OF BIRTH: Belmond, Iowa

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: dietician

EDUCATION: university degree

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

She lived in Iowa City for four years while attaining her degree.  She then spent a year and a half in Sioux City, Iowa.  She then moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa, on the southwestern border of the state for her dietetic internship in the neighboring Omaha, Nebraska, for two years.  She has been residing in Osage, Iowa, for 28 years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Amanda Poryes (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well let me think. Um, after I graduated from high school, I went to college at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City, and following in my older sister’s footsteps, who was already there for a year. Uh, I lived in a dormitory, which at that time was all women and ended up with a roommate who was very near the area, who was from the, uh, area that I was also from.  In fact, we both grew up on a farm and our farms were only, probably, oh, six miles apart. We did not know each other; however, because we went to different school districts, but we got to know each other.  We did have one mutual friend in our high school years, um, because the friend which she knew from school attended the same church that I went to. Anyway, uh, we had great fun as roommates and did crazy things, uh, living in the dorms as well as just having fun socially with other people during that first year.  I did graduate, uh, in December of 1977 from the University of Iowa and got married [sighs] then in [breaths] February, ya, uh, February of 1978. We were looking for a place that, uh, my husband would be able to practice law and I would be able to work as a dietitian.  So we ended up here in Osage, Iowa, which is in northern Iowa.  And after moving to Osage, uh, after being here a couple years we had our first child, just married herself this past summer. And then three-and-a-half years later our son was born, who is currently, um, applying for medical school in Iowa City and will be married next summer.  They have everything reserved and she actually has ordered her dress, and we just saw them today before we headed home, and she said her dress is actually here.  Already!  So, she’s not gonna go and, ya know, get fitted for it yet, obviously.  But, she … they have made a lot of the decisions, and things are reserved, and so they’ll be getting married in a church in Iowa City, and, um, the reception is actually in a [stutters] … it was a church previously and it’s now been converted into a reception or a venue for larger parties.  It’s called Old Brick Church; that’s what it’s referred to, and it was … it’s basically right on campus, um, just down the street from where I would have lived in the dorms.  Oh for pete’s sake, I kept thinking I should do that on our way from Iowa City to home and then I thought no, because we always run into this dead spot and calls get dropped, and I thought sure enough we’d be talking [laughs] and that would happen and then when we got home everything kinda just, you know, went out of my head.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Amanda Poryes (under supervision of David Nevell)

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject has the characteristic nasality and rhoticity of the northern Midwestern region. Vowels are pronounced with a fair amount of tension, particularly emphasized before /r/s. Please notice the subject’s use of the pure [o] in the word “home” in the end of the extemporaneous portion of the interview. This deviation is due to the northern position of Osage in Iowa, near the border of Minnesota. In “Comma Gets a Cure,” the subject’s /o/s are diphthongs, which represents her mid-state upbringing.

COMMENTARY BY: Amanda Poryes (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/11/2008

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).

 

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