Michigan 18

Listen to Michigan 18, a 19-year-old woman from West Bloomfield, Michigan, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 19

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/12/1998

PLACE OF BIRTH: North Vernon, Indiana

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Arab/Syrian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: enrolled in college

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

The speaker lived in Columbus, Indiana, from birth to age 7. She then lived in West Bloomfield, Michigan, from 7 to 18. She had been living in East Lansing, Michigan, for six months at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker was raised in a bilingual household. She grew up speaking Arabic and English. Although she never spent more than a one or two months at a time in Syria, she visited regularly throughout her life and considers it her second home.

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

RECORDED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/11/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, lots of corn. The people there [in Indiana] were very aggressive, which was why we moved in the first place, but I moved when I was 7, so. It was a large part of my childhood. I personally hated it because I had one friend who I loved very much, and her name was Willa, and I thought — since I was so young — I thought that she was going to be moving with us, ‘cause that’s how I thought life worked. But my mom’s like: “No, no we’re moving.” So I asked her if we could stay for the sake of me still being with my friends, but she’s like: “No, we’re moving.” So we ended up moving, and I never saw Willa again.

I mean, at first I thought every — no, I’m going to tell you this, like, for real — I thought everyone, like, everyone in Michigan were aliens because they had hitchhiker’s thumb and I didn’t. Like, look at this, like I just, it goes straight up. I thought everyone was an alien; I was so scared of everyone, but I did end up making friends. I made friends with this one girl who had a twin and I didn’t know. So when I hung out with her one day, I didn’t know that I was hanging out with her twin. So I was telling her an inside joke that we made the day before, and she didn’t know what I was talking about; in fact, she didn’t even know who I was. So that’s how I met her twin, and we both became friends.

So, I met people through my classes, through late night, through my brother’s friend who has, uh — he’s a junior right now. He lives on my floor, so he’s introduced me to his friends, and I became friends with his friends, so we’ve got a little connection going on.

Oh, my least favorite class? See, here’s the thing: My least favorite class would be nutrition, and not because of the content but because of the professor, because for me it — it’s very important to have a professor who makes the, the class interesting, ‘cause if they don’t, then that defeats the entire purpose, ‘cause I was interested in the content that would come from nutrition, and I’m still interested in it, but the professor makes me want to pull my hair out. So it’s my least favorite class in terms of professor, but in terms of content, I thoroughly enjoy learning about it.

No, I took a second one just now. I got 94 on the first one, and then I have yet to know about my second one.

Well, I haven’t been in Syria in ten, ten years now ‘cause that’s when the civil war started, but I would go every year for around four months with my family to see both sides of my family, and I remember the only thing I was dreading was the cockroaches because they had a very bad cockroach problem everywhere in Syria, but, other than that, like, I was always so excited — like, it seemed like my own, like, little world that no one quite understood because, before the Syrian Civil War, I remember standing up in class going: “Oh, I’m from Syria,” and everyone’s like: “wh- where is that, what is that, like, where is that?” And the teacher’s like: “Dania, can you point it out on the map for us?” And then, I was so — I was like 8 years old; I was so proud of myself. I found it on the map, and I pointed it out, and they’re like: “Woah, that’s so small; do people live on there?” Uh, yeah, they do: my entire family; thanks for asking. But, like, back then, like, it was — it was much, it was much simpler times; like, it was a nice little, like, place where I could just focus on my family.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/11/2017

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).

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