Nebraska 3

Listen to Nebraska 3, a 70-year-old man from Bloomfield, Nebraska, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 70

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/03/1948

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bloomfield, Nebraska

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired

EDUCATION: college degree

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

The subject has spent roughly 15 years of his life outside his home state. He left his hometown of Bloomfield to attend college in Lincoln, Nebraska. After his four years there, he left the state to work in California. Five years later, he returned to Nebraska. At the time of this recording, he had been living in Klamath Falls, Oregon, for about 10 years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Katie Herling

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/12/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, I, I grew up in Nebraska — and, uh, in a little town of a thousand. And, um, uh, spent my first, uh, eighteen years there, wen- went to grade school and high school, had about twenty-five in a class. And then I attended the University of Nebraska. And after that, I came to California and worked. Some of the, uh, interesting, uh, language u- uses there are, uh, not making a difference, uh, between I’s and E’s in words. Like, for example, in, uh, the word kettle: Uh, we would ordinarily pronounce that as “kittle.” And, uh, with verb, uh, helper verbs, they were usually turned around. You’d say “I went to town” or — I’m sorry — “I, I gone to town, and I had went to the store.” And that was hardly ever, uh — you hardly ever made a mistake doin’ that. Uh, some, uh, oh other, uh, other words that would, uh, get pronounced differently would be like the state of Washington; ya know, we’d say “Warshington, Warshington.” Or, or and that you’d “warsh” clothes rather than wash clothes. So growing up, we had to, uhh, in Nebraska, li-like, uhhh, probably other states, ya know you had to learn how to correct your English so [laughs] so that you didn’t sound like as, uh, ya know, uh, some hick there. The end.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kris Danford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/05/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Some features of this subject’s dialect include:

• kit: slight shift to [ ɪə ] (perhaps because of the subtle elongation of the word)
• job, strong, comma: jaw dropped, rounded vowel
• foot: slight shift to [ ʊə ] (perhaps because of the subtle elongation of the word)
• English, expensive: vowel in the second, unstressed syllable is closer to [ i ] rather than [ ɪ ]
• implied, idea, time, right, side, five: the initial vowel is more open and rounded than [aɪ], somewhere between [ɑɪ] and [ɒɪ]
• bath: slight shift toward [ æɪə ]
• lawyer: very round, resonance far back
• Nebraska, apple: “a” very bright and forward
• interesting: shift to [ n] rather than [ ŋ ]
• trap her: connected, dropped h
• R’s are quite hard

COMMENTARY BY: Kris Danford and Katie Herling

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/05/2018

The archive provides:

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• 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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