Massachusetts 16

Listen to Massachusetts 16, a 73-year-old woman from Lynn, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 73

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/07/1951

PLACE OF BIRTH: New Hampshire (but raised in Massachusetts)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Caucasian with Irish ancestry

OCCUPATION: retired high school teacher

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

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

The subject spent the first 22 years of her life in Massachusetts, then lived for 10 years in New Jersey and 10 years in Ohio before moving to Downeast Maine, where she has lived for the past 31 years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: 

The subject’s speech seems uninfluenced by any other factors. Her regional accent has perhaps been softened by years spent living in other states, but it is fundamentally unchanged.

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

RECORDED BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 29/08/2024

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 grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and I was born in New Hampshire, but, you know, in the early years my parents moved around a little bit, but we ended up in Lynn, and, um, I went to school in Lynn. We had a couple of different houses there, because the family grew, and grew out of the house; we moved into another house. And, um, our first house, I walked to school. It was nine-tenths of a mile, and, uh, if you lived a whole mile, you got a bus ticket, but if you didn’t live a whole mile, you walked. And we walked home for lunch, and walked back to school. And, uh, we sang a lot; it was a Catholic school, so you sang when you got there, you sang, um, before lunch, before you left, you sang when you got back, you sang when you left. And you also had music. Class. So, between the singing and the walking, we had fun day [laughs] ’cause that was the day.

Um, I loved the grammar school, and actually my mother ended up teaching there, not when I lived there, but, um, when my youngest brother was there, she had him as a student. And, uh, my sister ended up being a teacher there and a principal, so, the school had us for a long time. She — my sister just retired a coupla years ago. Uh, then I went to high school in Lynn, at a Catholic high school, and, um, it was on the other side of town, but, uh, I could take a couple of city buses to get there. Or, occasionally my dad would drive us ’cause he was a teacher, not in a public school, but not far from where the school was. Uh, Saint Mary’s, of Lynn. It was a girls school. The boys school was right next door. Uh, we had, uh, my senior year it went — uh, I forget what they called it — it wasn’t really coed; you still had two schools, but some of the classes were together, my senior year.

Um, then I went to UMass, met your mother, right in the beginning of the school year. Uh, we had rooms that were, um, kind of kitty-corner to each other, in a way, only one room between us. And I didn’t really have a working roommate. Actually, you were down the hall, freshman year. Yeah. Um, but then sophomore year we roomed together.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/08/2024

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject often drops final Rs in unstressed syllables (e.g., “another[r] house,” “fo[r] lunch,” “youngest brothe[r]”) and some medial Rs before consonants (“fo[r]get”), which is characteristic of eastern Massachusetts. Words that would be pronounced with a short “aw” sound in Standard American or a long “ah” sound in General American, such as “got” and “comma,” are pronounced with a combination of those two sounds (“awuh”) that is also typical of eastern Massachusetts. Additionally, there is some elision in words/phrases such as “little,” “out of,” and “couple of.”

COMMENTARY BY: Barrie Kreinik

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/08/2024

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.