Pennsylvania 13

Listen to Pennsylvania 13, a 57-year-old woman from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 57

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/11/1962

PLACE OF BIRTH: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: daycare teacher

EDUCATION: high school

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker is more specifically from the Mayfair neighborhood of northeast Philadelphia.

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

RECORDED BY: Darah Donaher (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/03/2020

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Grew up in Philadelphia my whole life. For 57 years, I’ve been living in Philadelphia. I have, um, seven siblings. I have five sisters, two brothers. Um, we were very, um, close-knit family. All the girls were in the front bedroom, and then, um, my brothers had this small back room with bunk beds, and my mom and Mary Kay, the baby: They slept in the middle room. But, yeah, we had two double beds in here and bunk beds at one time in the front bedroom. Ya know, my mom always made sure holidays were fun, and birthdays she made everything special, and she did raise us on her own. My dad passed when I was young. I was four. So she more or less raised eight children on her own. And she just taught us, ya know, how to that you work, ya know, ya work hard and ya pay your bills and [laughter]. But, um, yeah we did have a lot of fun growing up. And then, um, my cousins would come over; we’d have Sunday dinners, grandparents, and, um, ya know, just a lot of fun. Always very close. I can always count on my brothers and sisters to help me if I need anything. And we’re all — we all actually live, live in the area except for one sister lives in Jersey, New Jersey. But everybody else is like five, ten minutes from here, so we’re still very close. …

I always liked Christmas, cause, um, we would get the doll that we we asked for, and I always remember coming down in the morning, and you looked for your doll and that’s where your pile was. ‘Cause there was eight of us; we had piles all over the living room; and you look for your doll, and that was your pile. You didn’t have a lot, but you were so appreciative of it. And my mom would always say, “Did you get everything you wanted?” And you always did, you know, whatever you asked for. We got roller skates. We got games, so many games, so many board games; between the eight of us, we had like every game out on the market. [Subject laughs.] [Interviewer: Has anyone ever commented on your accent?]

When we were in Ireland, when we were going through the TSA, I got beeped, so I had to go over to the side. And the woman was, ya know, patting me down and putting the wand around me and she’s asking me where I’m going, and I’m like, “Oh, I’m going to the United States.” And she — and I was trying to figure out what was making me beep; I’m like, I don’t have any metal on, I don’t know.

And she says, “Where are you from? You have so many dialects I can’t pick where you’re from.”

And I said, “Oh, I’m from the United States: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.”

And she’s like, “I can usually tell where people are from.” But she says that Philadephians have their own dialect and accents, that it’s very hard to figure out if you’re from New York or Boston or — yeah, ya pick up different dialects and different ways people talk, yes, by living in, being in the, in the environment.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Darah Donaher (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/04/2020

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).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.