New Zealand 14

Listen to New Zealand 14, a 52-year-old woman from Nelson and other places in New Zealand. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 52

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1954

PLACE OF BIRTH: Nelson, New Zealand

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: graduate degree

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

The subject has lived in Christchurch and Auckland as well as Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.  She was living in Newton, Wellington, when this recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

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

I’m from a, a place at the very top of the South Island of New Zealand.  The nearest town is a place called Nelson.  And it has a reputation for being an artsy town.  So there’s a lot of artists that live there.  And a lot of artists who have lived there for a long time.  Mmm.  A lot of ceramic artists.  It was originally ceramic artists … that lived in that area.  And then other artists came along.  I know there are a lot of ceramic artists that live and base in Nelson, that sell out of Nelson.  But their work’s slightly more expensive.  So that, you can pick out some of them in Wellington.  Some of their work.  And Nelson, um, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a … city.  Um, it doesn’t have a university.  It has a polytechnic.  Um, it has a reputation for being very nice and white, so it’s quite a conservative white culture.  But the, uh, see the iwi, Maori tribe’s from that area, so it also has quite a quite a strong Maori … culture … and strength to it.  A lot of the people that live in Nelson are really conservative and they’d rather not see that other side … of Nelson.  Um, I spent a lot of time in Christchurch in the Seventies.  Uh, I went to training college there, and, um, was to live in Auckland.  Did some post-grad work there, in Auckland.  Went to Sydney, to a drama school there for three years.  Stayed on there.  Worked for a long time with an Australian theatre company.  Lived in Melbourne.  Went in and out of Europe.  And I know that, um, some New Zealand accents go up at the end.  Like it’s a question as opposed to a statement.  I think that’s fairly… strong, like, right across the country. Um, and some… I’ve got this character that I play.  I work with, with.  We’ve- I’ve got a duo act that we put out, and we’re two Westie girls.  “And we talk like that!  There’s a lot of that going on!”  So, um that is quite actually happens.  It’s in our country.  When I first came back from overseas, I noticed…that shop assistants, mostly at supermarket checkouts would say, would say, “Thank you,” and I would give them my money.  And they would say, Thank you,” or “Thank you.”  A lot of kiwis say, “Thank you.”   A lot of the, um, supermarket staff in Wellington, um, Japanese, Chinese, uh, Asian, so they don’t say, “Thank you.”  They’re more likely to say cheers.  Yeah.  Yeah, well the Australian accent’s a lot stronger.  Um, are you going to interview any Australians?  Any Australians?  Uh, ah, I’ve, I’ve just, because I’ve just come from a, a piece of work, I really love the U.N. (?) acting students here.  I think they’re fantastic.  They’ve been great to work with, and uh, really generous.  I love them.  I so feel passionate about … working with them, and, and having the generosity that they’ve given me, just in this last session.  Oh, they’re fantastic.  So yeah, I feel passionate about that.  And that’s great, because I’ve come here to do my Master’s with – I want to reconnect with my passion for theatre, because I’ve been away from it for a while.  And, so, that work that we did today is … it’s giving me that.  Yeah.  So even if I only get that once a week, that’s great.

TRANSCRIBED BY: David Nevell

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: 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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