Massachusetts 1

Listen to Massachusetts 1, a 79-year-old woman from Quincy, Braintree, and Sandwich, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 79

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1920

PLACE OF BIRTH: Boston, Massachusetts

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: N/A

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

Subject has lived in Massachusetts her entire life: Boston for eight years, Quincy for 21 years, Braintree for 23 years, and Sandwich up to the point of the interview (about 27 years).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Janet Rodgers

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 1999

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My mother gave birth on a stormy January night in 1920 in a homeopathic hospital in Boston, Mass. My first eight years were spent in a double-decker bottom-floor flat surrounded by neighbors from Ireland, Poland and England. Our family read by gaslight, and Mom cooked on a coal stove and a gas stove, which often ran out of gas in the middle of preparing supper. But not to worry: An oil lamp and matches were kept close by. Meanwhile, Dad would get a quarter out of an old sugar bowl, and sometimes he would put me on his shoulder and let me drop the coin in the meter in the hallway. One memorable day some workmen arrived to install the wires for electricity. I remember sitting on the brick sidewalk, dangling my feet through the cellar window as I watched them work. The fixtures they put in the parlor had beautiful orange frosted globes that cast a warm glow, and I’m sure that is why, to this day, orange is my favorite color. From Boston, I lived there for eight years. Then we went maybe thirty miles to Quincy, which was on the water, and I spent the next twenty-one years there. And then we moved inland a bit again to Braintree, Mass., which is … was maybe fifteen or twenty miles away, and we spent twenty-three years there.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Dylan Hilpman

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2005

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:

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• 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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