Minnesota 7

Listen to Minnesota 7, a 71-year-old woman from St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 71

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/07/1940

PLACE OF BIRTH: St. Paul, Minnesota

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired

EDUCATION: high school

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

She grew up in St. Paul, Minnesota, and stayed there. She lived in the same house from birth to the time she got married at 20 and then moved to another house in St. Paul and has been there ever since.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Göran Tenney Norquist (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/04/2012

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, I wonder what it would sound like with my relatives in North Dakota, saying that … much more Scandinavian accent than we do. Yeah, yeah, sure, yes I was, uh, born and raised in St. Paul. And, um, my mother is, was all Norwegian; my dad was all Danish. My mother came from North Dakota; my dad was born and raised in St. Paul. Ooooohhh, my goodness, I haven’t had very many. Um, I married young, I had an office job when we married. In, um, and then two years after we were married, we had Michael and I, st, was a stay-at-home mom until somewhere in maybe the, hmmm, I’m trying to think here; somewhere in the eighties, I had a part-time office job for about two years. And then in the late eighties, I went to work at Dayton’s, which is a department store; mm, it’s now Marshall Field’s. It’s now Macy’s! [giggles] And, uh, I worked, uuuhhh, part time there, in the handbag department for about four or five years. I mean it’s pretty hard, I’ll tell ya! I guess photography because it’s, it gives me a chance to express myself in what I see, perceived through the camera lens, like, like I’ll take of a picture of a beautiful blooming weed [giggles]. Uh, I think it’s beautiful and somebody else might look at it and say, “That’s a weed.” Ya, know? So it, it’s all in what my mind’s eye sees.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Göran Tenney Norquist (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/04/2012

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.