Jamaica 1

Listen to Jamaica 1, a 22-year-old woman from Kingston, Jamaica. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/04/1987

PLACE OF BIRTH: Port Antonio, Jamaica, but raised in Kingston

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: West Indian

OCCUPATION: actor

EDUCATION: university

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

Subject was born in Jamaica and was raised there until the age of 15, when she moved to Australia. In Australia, she has lived in Brisbane and Melbourne.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject attended schools in Brisbane, Australia. In addition, her mother was Irish, and the subject says that might have influenced her accent.

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

RECORDED BY: Geraldine Cook

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/10/2009

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, at the moment, um, oh, I’m an actor. I just finished doing a show with the Melbourne Theatre Company. I did, ah, a play by Joanna Murray Smith, um, which was the first professional job I’ve done, I guess you could say, since graduating from drama school. Um, at the moment I’m working on a piece back at drama school, with one of the, ah, postgraduate students, creating a show from scratch which is, um, difficult and has its own, crazy problems making a work from nothing essentially, well not nothing, but just having an idea and then trying to build a whole show around that one idea, um, which is very different, er, to what I’ve just come out of which was a state theatre show and then coming back into something that’s really based in creating from the very beginning. Um, and then after I finish this, I will be starting to rehearse a musical with Geoffrey Rush, which is exciting; um, he’s a lovely man, um, you know, should be a bit of fun. It’s kind of good, I think, since in the months since, in the year since graduating, I’ve kind of got a chance to do the different kinds of theatre, so a kind of generic, commercial audience, state theatre show, and something that’s, then doing something that’s, um, more, creating from scratch, and independent or a bit left, and then going and doing a musical; so [I’ve] been quite happy with dipping my finger in lots of pies, I guess.

[Subject concludes by reading Inglan Is a Bitch, by Linton Kwesi Johnson, in a Jamaican accent.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Geraldine Cook

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/10/2009

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.