South Africa 14

Listen to South Africa 14, a 37-year-old man from Pretoria, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 37

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1968

PLACE OF BIRTH: Pretoria

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian South African

OCCUPATION: student (no other profession given)

EDUCATION: law degree and drama studies

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject refers to his schooling, his family and his decision to study acting after completing a law degree. Despite a brief stay in the Northern Cape, he was born and raised in Pretoria, where he would have gained significant exposure to spoken English. During his acting course, he also participated in pronunciation training, aimed at producing more neutral South African English for performance purposes. This possibly influenced his spoken English.

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

RECORDED BY: Marth Munro and Karina Lemmer

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 was born in Pretoria, the capital of the Republic of South Africa *a few years ago. Well my ancestors came from Netherlands um in th.. um the middle of the s… *um seventeenth century um and they were living in the north of Netherlands, alongside the Merwederivier. Um from them my surname v… *van der Merwe, that is a um, that means in English “from the Merwiere”, so um so they came in *that century and um well my my um that was great-great-*grandfather, great-great-great-great grandfather. And he married a a French girl um which surname was Perrault. So um actually we are living in South Africa. It’s part of Africa, quite different than Europe. Um but after a few centuries, well, one gets used to Africa and um actually really sentimental and um you grow a a very deep-rooted feeling about Africa. Um but still one is, um one, one do come from Europe so, um, strange combination, I think it are going to take a few centuries to adapt a hundred percent in Africa. But um at this stage, well, I um went to Pretoria in high school and and I started university, *also in Pretoria, and now I’m studying in drama, and, yes, I’m nearly finished and hopefully I will get work in my drama course.

[* = vocalic pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Despite a brief stay in the Northern Cape, he was born and raised in Pretoria, Gauteng, where he would have gained significant exposure the spoken English. During his acting course, he also participated in pronunciation training, aimed at producing more neutral South African English for performance purposes. This possibly influenced his spoken English. Despite such training, his speech displays certain phonetic features common to the Afrikaans accent. The /R/ is trilled in pre-vocalic positions in words such as “Africa,” and the /g/ is omitted from the word “English,” resulting in /ɪŋliʃ/. Also note the insertion of a syllable in “century,” which makes it /setʃɪˈari/. Syntactically he sometimes favors the continuous form of the verb over the simple form. Example: “We were living in the North…” This too is often noted in the English of Afrikaans speakers.

COMMENTARY BY: Karina Lemmer

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

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