New Jersey 4

Listen to New Jersey 4, a 20-year-old woman from Monmouth Junction, New Jersey, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1987

PLACE OF BIRTH: Princeton, New Jersey

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: university student and waitress

EDUCATION: university junior at the time of this recording

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

The subject was born in Princeton, New Jersey, but raised in Monmouth Junction, New Jersey. At the time of this recording, she was living in Boca Raton, Florida.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Adam Raelson

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/09/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, um, I grew up in central New Jersey. And I have an older brother who is, three years older than me and an older sister who is five years older than me. So by the time I made it to high school, my sister was off away at college and my brother and I had gotten, um, we formed a really close relationship. We were like best friends. And we would always – he was still living at home, and I – we would have these days that every once in a while when we were sick of school and we were sick of work, we would just like, we would play hookie. We would just skip it. We would skip school, skip work for the day. And, we called it our family cut day. And the two of us would go, and we would just go and do something fun for the day. We would go to the Liberty Science Center, or to a museum, or to, uh, Six Flags Great Adventure, which was in Jackson, New Jersey. And it was probably one of the most fun that I’ve had in my life because it was always, it was something we did together and we were able to have fun and we didn’t have to go to school or go to work anyways. So, it was just a really good way for us to get away and spend some time together and we really built our relationship, um, even more through having those days rather than just typical family Christmas and, over the dinner table and stuff. We were able to bond on a different level which nobody knew about, and still don’t know about to this day! Our parents don’t know, work doesn’t know, school doesn’t know. Um, so we just had a good time, and I really enjoyed it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

In the closed mid central “er” sound, she pronounces it with an unrounded, open-mid back vowel “uh” + /r/ but only when it’s orthographically spelled “ur,” as in “hurry.” Sometimes she pronounces the word “her” with a closed mid central “er” while other times with the “uh” sound, so it seems maybe she uses the “uh” sound only when she’s trying to enunciate properly. Before the “r,” she pronounces the /æ/ very clearly in “Sarah,” though not necessarily in other environments, like in the word “veterinary” where it is pronounced “vech-ruh-nary” with a more nasalized /æ/ before the “r.” She also pronounces it with only four syllables as opposed to five. She pronounces “off” with a real rounded open-mid back vowel “aw.” When ditching school, she referred to that as “playing hookie.” She almost always pronounces the word “to” as “tuh.” And in her own story, she makes a grammatical mistake: “We were able to bond on a different level which nobody knew about, and still don’t know about to this day.” This is probably more of a performance error rather than a competence error because this does not seem to be a recurring feature in her way of speaking or dialect.

COMMENTARY BY: Adam Raelson

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/09/2007

The archive provides:

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• 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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