Pennsylvania 11

Listen to Pennsylvania 11, an 18-year-old woman from Upper Saint Claire Township, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 18

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/11/1999

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student and research assistant

EDUCATION: freshman in college

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

The speaker was raised in Upper Saint Claire Township, which is a suburb 10 miles southwest of Pittsburgh. At the time of this recording, she had been living in East Lansing, Michigan, for about three months.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her father is from Pittsburgh, and her mother is from Valley Stream, Long Island, New York.

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

RECORDED BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/11/2018

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, growing up in Pittsburgh was really nice because, um, I’ve always kinda thought of it as like an underrated city. Like it’s small enough where you feel safe walking wherever you want to, especially when, like, obviously when you go into the city, than it would be to like go into New York City and be, like, so overwhelmed because there’s just so much. Um, there’s a lot of art there. Um, the area I grew up in, um, was primarily like a upper-middle-class, white area. Um, it’s a lot different than it is in the city, and, uh, there isn’t really a specific way people sound where, uh, I’m like from, like Upper St. Clair. But if you like go into the city, you hear a lot of, like, weird words, like “yinz,” which is just — it’s like “y’all” or “you guys.” Um, so it’ll be like, “Hey did y-yinz guys watch the Bucs game?” And the Bucs are the Pirates, and, they’re our baseball team. Um, and, my family from my dad’s side have that kind of accent in the way they talk. Um, like my grandmother, for example, was from West Mifflin, and that’s a little bit outside of Pittsburgh, but they really have that “yinzer” kind of tone of voice and way of speaking, which is kinda cool but also like, kinda weird.

We have a, um, dictionary called the Pittsburghese Dictionary, and it has a bunch of different words about — that like you wouldn’t hear anywhere else, like “chip-chopped” ham is just sliced ham. Don’t know why its called “chip-chopped,” but that’s just what Pittsburghers thought it was called, so, um, yeah, it’s like a — it’s a, it’s a really cool place. There’s a lot of art; um, it’s a really historical place; um, I love going downtown; it’s one of my favorite things to do. Uh, we have a lot of famous people from there; they never come back, but, like, they were there at one point, like Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa, um, Michael Keaton, yeah. And, uh, there’s a lot of movies filmed there too. Uh, the Andy Warhol Museum is there, which is really cool.

I felt very safe in the area I grew up in. There’s like no crime rate there, so like we never had to worry about like anyone breaking into our house or anything, which was really comforting, I guess, for like an anxious little kid. Um, the only thing is that you cant really walk anywhere where I’m from; it’s very like, spread out; you have to drive everywhere, as opposed to, like, our neighboring township, where, like, they have like a, an area where you can just walk everywhere, like they don’t even have school buses ’cause it’s all very, like, close together, so that’s something I always, like, envied growing up is being able to, like, “Oh, like let’s walk to like, the coffee shop down the street,” like you can’t do that in Upper St. Clair. But, um, the schooling was really nice; like, I never really had any problems; like, people were always pretty nice. Um, I got a good education, I think, there.

Uh, in my hometown, we — me and my friends usually — uh, would just see a lot of movies and get a lot of food because there’s actually a lot of restaurants in my area. Um, most of the time we would just go downtown, and, like, do something. We can take the T downtown for like two dollars, which is the train; you can take that downtown and get off and just walk around if you want. You don’t even have to, like, to spend any money other than like the traveling, and most of the time we would kinda just hang out at each other’s houses ’cause, like, I said you can’t really walk anywhere, so when you can’t drive, it’s like, “Hey, mom, can you drive me to Andrew’s house? And we’re gonna watch a movie or something.”

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mia Taylor (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/11/2018

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

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