Michigan 14

Listen to Michigan 14, a 62-year-old woman from Muskegon, Michigan, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 62

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/08/1952

PLACE OF BIRTH: Muskegon, Michigan

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: costume designer

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

The subject went to college in New York City and graduate school in Ohio. She then moved to Chicago, where she has lived since (for about 25 years).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She vacationed every summer in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, although she says she never had a “Yooper” dialect.

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

RECORDED BY: Tanera Marshall

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/04/2014

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, we went to Marquette, which is in UP [Upper Peninsula], upper Michigan. At least every summer we were usually there for two or three weeks. And my cousins had a heavy “Yooper” accent. So I always thought that was really funny. They of course thought I was odd. I can’t do it. There was, there were a few different words. We had a cottage on Lake Superior; it was a family cottage. My grandfather bought it, and so all of the, all of my mother’s, well, two sisters and then all of the cousins used it all the time. And it wasn’t called a cottage; it’s called “camp.” And all of the cottages that we think of as cottages — everything is called “camp.” “We’re going out to camp.” That means you’re going out to the cottage on the lake. Lake Superior takes a long, long, long time to get warm in the summer. But one of the things that my cousin and I would do was see who could stay in the water the longest without turning blue. And we would — literally. I mean you’ve seen little kids when their lips turn purple? We would sit there. … But Lake Superior is gorgeous. It’s clear and blue and clean — probably because it’s too darn cold for anything to live there, other than really good fish. Lots of campfires and, I mean, as kids we collected things: driftwood, and bugs, and snakes, and frogs, and … Camp actually is still there, and it is not quite but almost exactly the way it was when my grandfather purchased it in 1920s.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Tanera Marshall

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/04/2014

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Classic Midwest pronunciations include  START, MARQUETTE (aɚ); JOB, COTTAGE (a); STRESSED (ɛ̞); and TIRE, REQUIRED (ɑijɜ˞). However, notice the absence of the stereotypical Midwestern “flat vowel” onglide /i/ or /e/ before /æ/ in RELAXING BATH.

COMMENTARY BY: Tanera Marshall

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/01/2015

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.