Scotland 4

Listen to Scotland 4, a woman in her 20s from Fife, Scotland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20ish

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1980

PLACE OF BIRTH: Fife (on the northeast coast of Scotland)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: When recorded, subject was a university student.

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

The subject moved to Newcastle, England, at the age of 18 to attend university. There she has had to modify her dialect in order to be understood.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: N/A

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): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I live in a place called Coupar, which is in Fife, on the northeast coast of Scotland. It’s just above of Edinburgh, em, but the accent is actually very different to Edinburgh. Fife isn’t a city, nor is it a town; it’s more of a district, with lots o’ little towns and villages all joined together. Lot o’ countryside there, but we do have some big towns as well. Fife itself could be split into two parts. I’m from the east coast of Fife, but we also have the west of Fife and, again, you would notice that the accent and dialect is totally different over there as well. I’ve lived in Fife all my life, em, apart from when I moved to university when I was 18. Since I’ve come to Newcastle to go to university, my accent has changed slightly, and I find it difficult to speak in my natural accent here because people just don’t understand me. Em, always people’s comment that when I go home that I talk differently. Em, my parents have *lived in Fife all of their lives as well. Em, my dad is a chef and my mum is a nurse. And all my grandparents and all my family live in Fife. Em, so I’ve got a real Scottish background. Em, it’s nice to come to university, em, down in Newcastle, where’s it’s completely different lifestyle. It’s a big city down here, which is totally different to where I’m from. Em, a bit of a country girl really. Em, it’s things like transport and things. You can’t get buses or anything back home, em, for ages, like one bus an hour, where down here they’re like every five minutes, so it is really different. It is nice, again, to go home to see all my friends, see all my family, and they always say that I’ve gone posh, when I go home. Em, *things, different things about *living in Fife is the dialect, obviously. Em, instead of saying “I don’t know,” people up there would say “I dae ken.” Em, if we’d say, it’s things like “I’m no going out the night” instead of “I’m not going out tonight.” Em, dropped “t”s and don’t pronounce em “t”s on words, em, so I would say “it’s the end o’ day today” instead of “the end of the day.” I would miss out words as well. Em, again, if you go slightly north of Fife you’ll come to Dundee, which is a completely different accent again, so Scotland is, em, pretty varied up there.
[* = vocal pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/2005

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).

 

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