Iowa 4

Listen to Iowa 4, a 30-year-old woman from Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 28/09/1985

PLACE OF BIRTH: Iowa City

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: brand strategist

EDUCATION: BA degree

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

The subject has always lived in Iowa City.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: none

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): 25/04/2016

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 was born in Iowa City, Iowa, and I grew up in a lower-middle-class family in the same city. I have one brother, I have two little girls, and I’m getting married in March. And a funny story is that last week I asked my fiancé on a whim to marry me on Friday, and he rejected me via text message on an airplane. But, instead, me and a couple of my girlfriends are gonna go dress shopping just for fun, and it’s gonna be great.

So my brother is a pianist — a jazz pianist — who travels the world with a band called “Sweetie and the Toothaches.” Uh, and they are currently playing in Paris. Um, he lived in Austria for, like six months. He’s lived in Boston, St Louis, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa — he’s all over the globe. I never have any idea where he is. Like, I send him text messages, and I’m like, “Hey, you should come see your nieces!” And he’s like, “I’m in Germany.” So [laughs], uh, I see him like twice a year, but he’s around on occasion. He’s five years younger than me. Uh, he has a girlfriend who is actually Sweetie of Sweetie and the Toothaches.

Uh, growing up, he changed his name. His name was Korey, spelled with a K, which he was not a fan of. Um, but my mom liked all the K’s in our family. And, uh, in about third grade, he had another Korey in his class spelled with a K who was a girl, and he was not having it. And so he just came home one day and announced that his name was now Chase, which was his middle name, and completely cut off Korey from his life. And he just stopped answering — like, that was the moment on. And everyone just accepted it. He just didn’t answer anymore. It took, like, a week for the whole family to get on board, and he hasn’t been Korey since.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/04/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The speaker uses very hard R’s, with a  strong retroflex of the tongue (particularly evident in the unscripted speech). For example: “cure,” “married,” “girlfriend,” etc.

There is a lateral quality to many of the vowels and little lip rounding when it comes to words like “stop.”  The speaker uses [ɑ] rather than [ɒ].

The vowel space is flattened with a  relatively twangy, particularly on [æ] as in “Sarah” and “married.”

The speaker has a higher jaw position in relation to General American speech, contributing to some of these flatter vowel sounds.

COMMENTARY BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/05/2016

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.