Northern Ireland 4

Listen to Northern Ireland 4, a woman in her 20s from Derry, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom, who has also lived in Bahrain and the United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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Note: This subject is also listed as England 2 because of her unique background.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Hong Kong, China

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Irish/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university education

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

The subject was born in Hong Kong and then lived in Bahrain in the Middle East, Antigua, and St. Lucia in the West Indies, Florida, and Sweden. She also attended boarding school in southern England. At the age of 11, the subject moved to Northern Ireland. At the time of recording, the subject was a student at the University of Kansas, in the United States.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject’s speech is a wonderful amalgamation, showing the influences of a varied background. Her parents were international travelers while she spent time in an English boarding school, in Northern Ireland, and in Florida. One hears clearly the mixtures of influences. She is also listed as England 2.

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

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 1998

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 was born in Hong Kong. Um, I lived there for a year, so I don’t remember anything about it. I then moved to Bahrain in the Middle East, for, four years. Then I moved to Antigua in the West Indies for three years; um, then I moved to St. Lucia, which is also in the West Indies; that was very short. Then, I moved to Florida, in the United States, lived there for a while whilst attending boarding school in southern England. My home was in Florida. Um, did that for, um, also in Sweden (my Dad lived in Sweden, and I attended boarding school in England), and then at the age of 11, I moved to Northern Ireland and have lived there ever since. Um, well my parents are both Irish and they were raised in Londonderry, which is like the second principle town in northern Ireland and, um, they wanted to like settle back down and stop traveling so much. So, um, it didn’t worked out as planned, my mum moved back, but my dad still had to like stay in Sweden and America, and we went out there on holidays and he came back for holidays. And, um I got teased a lot for because of my accent, because I was Irish, but I had this very posh accent, used to be much, much posher. I like, adapted it very quickly, because I sounded so out of place. And it was also very weird because of um, the troubles, the terrorism. Um, [unclear] when I was in boarding school we were marched down to the church once a week, and forced to stand behind the religious teacher, who had an awful voice, like a cat wailing, and sing hymns, and she would watch us and make sure we sang along, um, and once I moved to Northern Ireland, I just gave up going to church, because I thought it was boring, but my friends, not even my friends, uh, the people at my school said, um, “Are you Church of England, or what?” And I said “Oh yeah, I went to Church of England.” And they were like “OK, well you’re a Protestant then, so we can, we can hang around with you, we can speak with you,” which knocked me for six [unclear], and so I was always known as the girl who didn’t have any hang-ups.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/03/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in the accent, please see my instruction manual at www.paulmeier.com. As the speaker in this sample is a unique individual, it is highly unlikely that she will conform to my analysis in every detail. But you will find it interesting and instructive to notice which of my “signature sounds” and “additional features” (always suggested only as commonly heard features of the accent) are widely used by most speakers of the dialect, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/10/2016

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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