Scotland 1

Listen to Scotland 1, a 21-year-old woman from Dundee, Scotland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: The subject was born in England but moved to Dundee after one month.

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Scottish (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: university student

EDUCATION: university student

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

The subject lived in Dundee all of her life until enrolling as an undergraduate at the University of Kansas in the United States about a year before this recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has a middle-class Dundee dialect.

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): N/A

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 1999

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in 1978 in Leicester, England, uh, where my dad was working at the time, but I lived there for amount of a month, so I guess I don’t have any accent from my mother at all.  Um, I’ve lived in Dundee, Scotland all of my life, um, until I was 20, when I came here Kansas. I guess I’ve got a pretty regular Scottish accent, um, mainly influenced by my friends. There’s a variety of accents in the city I come from, but most people speak on average like me [unclear], very, very different from Kansas.  I guess the town I come from has a higher population, maybe a hundred and seventy-thousand people, and there just seems to be a lot more to do.  There’s a lot more coming and going.  Wherever you go you see a lot more people on the street, but I guess I mean the difference from here and Lawrence is that you very rarely meet anybody from a different country, so every accent you hear is the same.  But coming here, you hear so many different accents.  Well, since I’ve come here, I’ve [unclear] all my accent’s totally changed. My     family make fun of me because I just … they say I don’t have a Scottish accent anymore.  People here disagree – they can’t understand a word I’m saying, but I guess since I’ve come here, I’ve been influenced by the people around me.  Dundee’s on the northeast coast of Scotland. To my knowledge, it’s the third-biggest city. For people who don’t know where that is, it’s roughly one hour sort of east of Edinburgh, which is the capital of Scotland.  Most people know where that is.  It’s not really famous for too much.  It’s  kind of industrial sort of town. Um, I would say we are fairly middle class.  It’s … Scotland’s, in my opinion, it’s kind of different from the United States.  There’s not so much of a real, real upper class.  There are people here  probably slightly more wealthy than a family like mine that’s average. And then there are people who have less money, but there’s not … I wouldn’t say … poverty to the same extent, or massive wealth to the same extent. So I guess in terms we are just average family.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Rose Mignano

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/06/2008

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 accent, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

And for greater perspective on the dialects, accents, and languages of Scotland, I recommend this podcast with IDEA Associate Editor Ros Steen.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

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

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.