Massachusetts 3

Listen to Massachusetts 3, a 47-year-old man from Burlington, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 47

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1958

PLACE OF BIRTH: Somerville, Massachusetts

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired Marine, police officer

EDUCATION: one year of college

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

He was raised in Burlington, Massachusetts.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

While he spent extensive time away from Massachusetts during his time as a Marine, he maintained his native dialect.

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

RECORDED BY: Rebekah Maggor

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, I was born in Somerville, which is a city just outside of Boston.  I was born in, uh, 1958, and then grew up in a town called Burlington, which is just north of the city.  I went to Burlington High School, and, uh, I graduated in 1977, and then I went into the Marine Corps, the United States Marine Corps in 1979, and then I, uh, got out in 2000.  I retired in 2000. And, um, I spent my first four years in San Diego, at camp P– I was an MP, military police.  And, uh, I spent my first four years at Camp Pendleton, which is in San Diego.  And, uh, then I went to Kaniowi, which is in Hawaii, spent three years at the Kaneowi Marine Corps Air Station.  From there I went to San Antonio,Texas and taught at MP school. Um, I was there from ’89– no, wait a minute, ’86 to ’89.  Then I came home to Boston on recruiting duty, which was my best duty in the Marine Corps, I loved it.  Got to come home. Uh, left recruiting duty for a year in Japan, half that time I spent in Korea.  Then I came back from Korea to Quantico, Virginia, which is just outside of DC.  And then I retired in 2000, and I’ve been here at Harvard since April of 2000.  I’m a police officer. Well, it’s our job here at Harvard to make sure the students that come here — as you know, they’re going to the finest institution in the world, and as a police officer, it’s our job to make sure that they can come here, get the best education known to man or woman, to do it in an environment that’s safe, and to have a little fun. I always thought that the Marine Corps was set a little bit — I saw that they were respected.  I saw that, you know, that kids that I knew and just the general public, you know, respects the Marine Corps.  Because, you know, this country doesn’t need the Marine Corps.  I mean, the Army can fulfill the mission that the Marine Corps has.  The reason that the Marine Corps’s still around is because the American people want the Marine Corps.  I don’t know if you ever knew that, but yes, they did. I don’t know.  It was somethin’ different.  It was something that not a lot of other kids my age could say that they’ve done.  Hey, look, I could have easily made a left instead of a right in my life, and I thought that the Marine Corps taught me to grow up, to be a man, to respect people, to be more responsible, and it was something that, um, it’s hard to explain.  We had a saying the Marine Corps, it’s called Semper Fidelis, which means you’re always faithful to the Corps.  And I think, going through those three months on Parris Island, no matter what else I do in my life, it has set me up for that.  Because when I look back on it, I always say — and I’m sure that you had some kind of recruit training too, so you can understand where I’m comin’ from.  So, after those three months, no matter what challenges I come across in my life, I always feel that I can handle that, because that kind of set me up for it.  And, um, God forbid, if we have to go to war, I want to go with the Marine Corps. I think that, if you’re makin’ a film, and you’re doing it, like “Good Will Hunting,” or a film that’s situated here in Boston, you absolutely have to get the accent righ, ‘cause if you don’t, then it seems like a fraud film, ’cause anyone that lives back here hears it right away, whether it’s a good storyline, you got the right cast, the right actors, as soon as you hear that accent and it’s not right, then it just like — it just like — you didn’t do your homework. You have to kind of be from Boston to hear the actual dialect.  It’s not something you can point your finger at.  It’s somethin’– you know it when you see it, you know what I mean?  And you know it when you hear it.  And I think, with our accent, I think it’s like, when you leave Boston, when you go to other parts of the country, people want to hear you talk.  I think for the most part, it’s, uh, like me, from bein’ from Boston, I love the Southern accent.  It’s respectful and it’s quiet and it’s, it’s polished.  And I think when you get away from Boston that people pick up on that, and they like the accent.  ’Cause you can’t go anywhere.  Like, if I go to California, and I go through the drive-through, and I’ll say, “Listen, I want a large … I want a large coffee with cream and sugar.”  So the box will come off and it’ll say, “Uh, could you please repeat your order?”  I’ll say, “Yes, I’d like a large coffee with cream and sugar.” Then I’ll hear like a little giggling from the box, and then they’ll say, “Sir, can you come to the window?” And then when I come to the window, there’ll be like you know, a couple people at the window just to look at me to see what this accent’s all about.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/12/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

He speaks with the “middle a” and uses little “r coloring” following vowels, as in “North” and “yard.”

COMMENTARY BY: Rebekah Maggor

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/2005

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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