Michigan 5

Listen to Michigan 5, a woman from Detroit, Michigan, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: N/A

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1965

PLACE OF BIRTH: Detroit

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: administrative assistant

EDUCATION: N/A

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Cynthia Blaise

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I’ve worked at Wayne State [University] for the last 10 years.  I’m now in my eleventh year, and I’m in my third office on campus.  I enjoy the campus; I love the student life and I enjoy having the activities, um, at my disposable — disposal on campus.  Currently, I work in the alumni association office.  And I am more like an office manager.  I, uh, make sure that everything runs smoothly, personnel positions are filled constantly, paperwork and bills are paid and processed accurately.  I’ve only been in this job for the last seven months.  I enjoy it tremendously.  The work sometime is tedious, but the people make it worthwhile to come into work every day.  In addition to my work at Wayne State, I also house-sit as a means of additional income.  By house-sitting, I, um, volunteer to watch people’s pets, um, when they go out of town.  I get to, uh, leave my home and have a mini-vacation.  I get to walk their animals.  I get to play with other dogs that I know I could never have in my home.  And I get to see parts of the city that I usually don’t get to see.  I love to hit — housesit on the east side of this city because that’s where most of the nicer homes are.  I get to experience their restaurants and their neighborhoods and feel a lot safer, um, at their homes than I do, actually, at my own.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Wright

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/08/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

This Detroit native provides a rather typical example of a southwestern Michigan dialect. Listen for the characteristic Michigan tendency to move the back vowel in “honest” into a sound that is closer to a front vowel. This is demonstrated in the words “drops, beyond, pot, office, constantly ” and ” processed.” Michigan a’s are exhibited in “campus,” “at,” and “animals.” This change is usually more exaggerated when preceding a nasal consonant. The “o” diphthong sound in “home” and “own” are characteristically tightened, leaning toward a pure vowel sound. “Are” is a good example of the somewhat dark “r” heard in this area and also heard in “for,” which is pronounced, “fer,” also common among Michigan speakers.

COMMENTARY BY: Cynthia Blaise

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.