Pennsylvania 1

Listen to Pennsylvania 1, a woman in her 30s from Havertown, Pennsylvania, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1960s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Upper Darby, Pennsylvania

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: Amtrak employee and former bank employee

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree in business and a master’s in liberal arts

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

The subject grew up in Havertown, right next to her birthplace of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania. She attended college at Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania, and earned her master’s degree from Villanova University, just outside Philadelphia.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Cynthia Blaise

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/07/1999

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, I was born in Upper Darby, actually, but I grew up in Havertown, which is right next to each other. I went to Penn State University in State College, Pennsylvania. I was a French major and a business minor. I went back to school to Villanova University, in Villanova, Pennsylvania, which is also a suburb of Philadelphia — and I took the train to get there — um, I guess in 1991 for my master’s degree in Liberal Studies, where you take a selection of various courses, um, from the Arts, the Humanities, and the Social Sciences.  Amtrak is a very, very interesting place. They’re about twenty years behind the times, which is OK, um because it’s quite a challenge. Um, but it’s very interesting. Um, it’s an interesting industry, definitely different from banking. Um, I’ve done a lot of neat stuff related to trains, like going into Centralized Train Control where they, um, track every single train on part of the northeast corridor. And all computerized, it’s kind of like NASA: You go into this dark dark room, no windows. And in the front of the room there’s a huge board that just has different colors on it that signify different things. Um, and they just track the progress of the train, and it’s so cool. Um, if there’s an accident or um, like a c- … if a conductor can see something on the tracks ahead, you know, he calls into Centralized Train Control and they immediately alert, y’know, 911 and Fire and Police, and all that stuff, so that is kind of cool. And I got to go on the high-speed rail locomotive [unclear], all the technology that we’re using is from Europe: France, Spain, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain. Um, they’ve all had, y’know, pretty sophisticated train systems, and a lot of the countries have high-speed trains, so, we are behind the times, but we’ll be catching up soon.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2006

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject has a middle-class Philadelphia dialect and exhibits interesting “vocal fry” at ends of phrases.

COMMENTARY BY: Cynthia Blaise

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/07/1999

The archive provides:

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• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
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