Massachusetts 7

Listen to Massachusetts 7, a 21-year-old woman from Dorchester, Boston, Massachusetts, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1984

PLACE OF BIRTH: Boston (Dorchester neighborhood)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: The subject was a college senior, majoring in social studies, when recorded.

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

She hasn’t spent any significant amount of time outside Massachusetts.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She attended Catholic school and then a private high school in a nearby suburb of Boston. She is very aware of her dialect and remarks that it made her “stick out like a sore thumb” when she transferred to the private suburban high school. She notes that when talking with strangers, or with authority figures, she consciously attempts to modify her dialect, specifically the r-coloring. Her parents were also born and raised in Massachusetts.

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): 07/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, my parents were both born in the Boston area. My mom is — she’s from Dorchester. She and her family grew up, um, a few streets down from where I live right now with my parents. And my dad, ah, he was born over in Everett, which is just a little bit north o’ here. Um, I was born and raised in Dorchester. Technically, I was born in Quincy, but I’ve lived my entire life in Dorchester. I haven’t spent any time outside of the Boston area. I’ve been to Europe probably once, but, uh, that’s about it. And for, um, for high school … I mean, when I was young I went to school in my neighborhood. I went to Catholic school, and then I went to private school in the suburbs, and that was different from, from where I grew up, because … And that was really different from, from where I grew up, um, just because people didn’t live as close to each other and stuff. Um, right now, I am gonna be a senior in college, and I am working on my thesis, and just getting ready to enjoy my last year. In high school, my friends all lived in the suburbs, where I lived in the city, and that was different because, um, everyone — their houses were a lot bigger than mine was. They all lived in single-family houses and had big backyards, you know, with all kinds o’, you know, dogs and cats, and, you know, that type of thing. And my neighborhood, it’s basically, you know a lot of us live in two- or three-family houses. And, you know, it’s a lot of people living right on top of each other. So it’s different, um, but nice; I like it. Also, um, what’s different about living, living in the city, um, as opposed to the suburbs, a lot of — a lot of my friends who lived in the suburbs, their parents weren’t from Massachusetts, whereas mine had grown up near me, and all of my aunts and uncles and cousins live, you know, within — some of ’em even within the same block as me. Um, so it’s fun, you know, walkin’ around, you know, runnin’ into people. You know, I’ve been — I’ve been — I’ve been driving around in my neighborhood and definitely run into some of my younger cousins, um, driving their bikes in the middle of the street. Almost hitting them, and then yelling at them for it. But yeah, that’s family life in an urban neighborhood, I guess. So, yeah, I was saying, um, about my accent. Even though I’ve — I– I’ve always lived basically the same house my whole life, um, you know, I — when I went to school to the suburbs and all that stuff, where I, um, I definitely, you know, I stuck out like a sore thumb. And so I — you know, I still even — you know it’s weird now, you know, I definitely picked up, um, you know, a lot of the R’s and stuff like that. And, you know, even now, it’s weird, ’cause I find myself when I’m in … when I’m in, talking to someone I don’t really know, or if it’s, you know, a person of authority or something like that, you know. Or if I’m addressing a group of people or something, I try really hard to use my R’s and all that stuff. You know, it’s, it’s weird. It depends on the kind of person I’m around, you know, where they’re from and stuff like that. Um, and even like a couple years ago, you know, when I started dating my boyfriend, um, I spent so much time with him that, um, you know, he has a different accent, but he was convinced that I was picking up the accent that, you know, uh, that he had in there for, you know, his, his parents, and his family’s accent as well. Sort of, you know, he thought it was like transmitted to me through him or something, but, yeah.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/11/2007

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.