Massachusetts 2

Listen to Massachusetts 2, a 46-year-old woman from Andover, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource; please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 46

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1953

PLACE OF BIRTH: Andover, Massachusetts

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: N/A

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

She has lived in Andover all her life and has a typical country dialect to prove it.

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): 19/08/1999

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I would like to talk about where I grew up.  Probably, from … up until age, say, 12, I grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, which is approximately 24 miles north of Boston, and about less than 10 miles from the New Hampshire border, and not that far from Maine.  And we grew up in this little town of Andover, and we lived in my grandfather’s home, because, whe– … The day my mom got married, her mom passed away, so my mom was left to care for her father.  And it was during World War II, and her sisters and brothers had all gone off to war and what not, so that’s how it transpired that we stayed in my grandfather’s home, which is in Baker’s Lane in little old downtown Andover.  It was a wonderful place to grow up.  We had a lot of kids, and it was a little dead-end lane.  And in our home in particular, we had — or my grandfather grew — cottage roses, along the side fence.  We had our own apple tree.  We had a pear tree.  We had our own sliding hill, that went down into this swampy area which was a feed-off from the Shawsheen River.  And, the older kids … they had some trees that were downed, and they would tie this huge rope around the downed trees, so that it would hang into the water. So in the winter, when it froze,  we could ice skate.  And the younger kids could hold onto the rope, so they wouldn’t fall.  It would help them to work into their balance, of ice-skating.  It was really neat, and kind of nice of them to think of, for little kids. So we — without even leaving our street, we could sled, we could ice skate.  We had a pear tree, which we ate the pears; um, the apple tree.  We had wild berries.  We had this great big, huge crate, that was like a, a, a huge box, but it was more made of wood, and I had, um, bunny cages in there, and, um, it just was a neat place to grow up.  My best friend growing up was, um, Michael O’Hagen.  And his mom had died right after he was born, so … he wa– he came to live with his grandmother who lived at the en– the beginning of the lane.  We lived at the end of the lane.  So, Michael was my, my childhood friend.  We played in this huge sandbox, that we had in our backyard, every single day.  We played in our sandbox, and then we would go up the hill to the Indian Ridge playground, and all the kids would be there at the playground doing — you know, arts and crafts, you know, ball games, card games, whatever was happening.  And then, up the street from where we lived were, was a variety store called Chicki’s.  And Chicki and Lou, they ran it.  They were Armenian.  And they had this glass case with all this penny candy.  And you would go there every day, with your penny.  And you would just peer into that glass case and think, “What will I buy today?”  It was the biggest adventure every day.  [Laughs] It was so inexpensive, but you thought it was this grand: I don’t know, this grand escape.  And you never had to cross a street.  It was just a delight. And we were just, maybe, a bit shy of the railroad tracks, with, you know, the train would come and take people into Boston and what not.  And the other side of the tracks was another store, called Ricky’s.  So there was Ricky’s and Chicki’s on either side of the tracks. [Squawk of laughter] But Ricky’s had, um, more of a sandwich bar, and on Friday’s people would go there for their, um, their fish, their fried fish dinners.  Because two stores up was St. Augustin’s Church, which dominated the area.  Although I was a Protestant.  [Laughs] The Catholic church was very — you know, it — you were very aware of it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2007

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.