Michigan 16

Listen to Michigan 16, a 22-year-old man from Marquette, Michigan, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/04/1995

PLACE OF BIRTH: Marquette, Michigan

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: B.A.

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

The speaker spent four academic years in East Lansing, Michigan.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He was born and raised in Marquette, as were his parents and grandparents.

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

RECORDED BY: Sean McKeon (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/04/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

All right, so this one time, my buddy and I were, uh, back out in the woods by my camp, and we’re just going, and all of a sudden one of the snowmobiles just stops working. The engine will rev up and everything, but the track on the back wasn’t spinning. So I called up another buddy of mine, and I was like, “Hey, man, I think we blew the belt.” But I looked at the belt, and he was talking me through it, too, and ’cause I’ve never fixed one before on my own and my other buddy had no idea about snowmobiles. So we’re all looking in there, and I’m like, “Bud, the belt’s pretty new, right? Like it looks good.” So finally I called my dad — ’cause I didn’t want to tell him at first I blew the belt — but, uh, call him up, I was like, “Hey, dad, this thing’s not working. Something’s wrong with it. But I see the belt right here; it’s intact. Like, I don’t know what’s wrong with the sled, but it’s not working right.” So we ended, er, up, uh, getting a toe strap and putting it through the skis, taking it through the other back of the sled, and towed her back to camp. We get her in. My dad takes a look at it. He’s like, “No, no, you were right; the belt’s all intact here; it’s doing pretty well.” So, u,h we take it into a shop. Turns out, one of the gears in the engine itself had stripped completely. So we were revving it up. So that was the snowmobile story.

One time I was reffin’ [refereeing]; I was reffin’ youth football. And I was the white hat, which means I was the ref in charge. And you, one of my, uh, other refs threw a flag, and he was a younger kid, and the coach was real pissed about it. And I went over and talked to the coach, and he’s like, “How could that be a penalty?” I said, “Coach, the flag’s sitting right there on the ground. How is that not a penalty?” And that’s all I got, bud.

Hockey reffin’, my favorite thing to see was always when, uh, there’s that one kid that would just sit on the end of the bench. He’s a big kid, and you see him in warmups; he barely touches the puck; he just kinda skates around. He can barely stand up half the time. But they, uh — every team has that one player, and he’ll always get a tap on the shoulder late in the second period when somebody did something bad to their star guy and he needs to get out there and take his one shift of the game. And he says, “Yes, coach, I’m ready!”

TRANSCRIBED BY: Sean McKeon and Deric McNish

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/06/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Marquette is a small city in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula (U.P.). The U.P. or “Yooper” accent is a variety of Upper Midwestern and North-Central American English that shares many characteristics with northern Wisconsin and Minnesota. /oʊ/ and /eɪ/ are monophthongized to /o/ and /e/. /aɪ/ is subtly raised, as in Canada. The speaker exhibits the “cot/caught” and “marry/merry/Mary” mergers. The overall quality of the speech is folksy and relaxed, with words blending together and sentences frequently ending with an upward inflection. “Morning” becomes “mornin’,” “reffing” becomes “reffin’,” and “mirror” becomes “meer.” This subject speaks quite quickly, but that seems to be an individual characteristic, rather than representative of the region.

COMMENTARY BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/06/2017

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.