Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1

Listen to Saint Vincent and the Grenadines 1, a 30-year-old man from Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/07/1986

PLACE OF BIRTH: Glen-Side Village, Vespo, Kingstown, St. Vincent and the Grenadines

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: African-Vincentian

OCCUPATION: teacher

EDUCATION: tertiary

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

Subject lived in Barbados for one and a half years in her late 20s.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/07/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, so I am from Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, which consist of 32 islands and cays. Uhm, it is dubbed the Caribbean island you are looking for. Uh, Saint Vincent being, uh, the main land and we also have some other beautiful islands, uh, Bequeia, Mustique. Uh, Saint Vincent is the home of the unique festival Nine Mornings. It is, uh, Christmas fe-festival which is celebrated nine mornings before Christmas, so normally in the early mornings from about 4 o’clock, you will have street parties and singing, festive children playing games, and so forth. Saint Vincent is also home to the Garifuna people: um, a set of people who were once vanished from the islands who later moved to the island of Balizo, and then further into Belize. Um, the official language, of course, is Garifuna; um, there’s traditional dance such as the punta, and so forth. So, it is indeed a unique island.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Elizabeth Montoya-Stemann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/08/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

• With the exception of the occasional, lightly r-colored NURSE word, this speaker is entirely non-rhotic in his speech.
• We hear no h-dropping.  This could be due to extra care the subject takes in being formal.
• -ing endings are almost all [ɪn].
• MOUTH words are pronounced [ɔʊ].
• intervocalic /t/ is [tʰ] not [ɾ].
• voiceless plosives are aspirated.
• STRUT words are pronounced [ʌ], in contrast to Jamaica, for example, where [ɒ] is generally used.
• notice [ɔd] for odd choice at 1:47.
• TRAP words are pronounced [a] not [æ].
• /th/ are more usually realized as plosives.
• notice consonant cluster reduction, e.g. [waɪp hɜ] for wiped her.
• NORTH/FORCE words use [ɒ]. e.g morning, normal, etc.
• Notice pure vowels in the unstressed syllables that in RP or GenAm would employ schwa, e.g. [tɹadɪʃɐnal] instead of [tɹədɪʃənəl] for traditional.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/08/2016

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).

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