South Africa 11

Listen to South Africa 11, a 21-year-old woman from Pretoria, South Africa. 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): 1984

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pretoria

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: Subject was studying drama in college at the time of this interview.

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her parents are very well educated, and she grew up in an Afrikaans family, speaking both Afrikaans and English.

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

RECORDED BY: Karina Lemmer and Marth Munro

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/2005

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 come from South Africa.  I was born in Pretoria.  My father is an engineer and my mother is a teacher.  We are three children.  My brother is also an engineer and my sister is a financial accountant.  I grew up in an Afrikaans, uh, family.  We speak English, few times but very few times.  And I’m studying drama so this is a—a dual-language institution, so we speak English and Afrikaans, yeah.  We get taught in English and in Afrikaans.  But my hobbies are hockey and dancing and singing.  And I want to be an actress one day, so I’m studying hard for it.  This is my third year now.  I’ll be doing my fourth year next year.  And then we’ll wait and see what happens in the future.  And then maybe one day, I’m famous.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Wright

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/08/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

She was born and raised in Pretoria, Gauteng. This more cosmopolitan region would have secured consistent exposure to spoken English. Such exposure is possibly notable in her dialect, as her syllable stress patterns reflect South African English. The /R/ sound is also less pronounced than it would be in Afrikaans speakers who have had less exposure to spoken English. Certain vowel sounds reflect typical patterns. For example: the /aʊ/ in “accountant” leans toward a /æʊ/ which is a feature of the dialect as is her treatment of the /o/. This sound displays less rounding than the RP /ʊə/. Another observation is the use of the /i/ in words that start with /RE/ spellings. Although Afrikaans speakers often favor the schwa over the /i/ she pronounced “remember” as /rimembə/ and “require” as /ɾikwaɪ/.

COMMENTARY BY: Karina Lemmer

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/2005

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.