South Africa 16

Listen to South Africa 16, a 20-year-old man from Vrede, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1985

PLACE OF BIRTH: Vrede, a small town in South Africa

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian South African

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: studying drama

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

Subject lived in Harrismith, in Kwazulu, Natal, where English is predominant. He now resides in Johannesburg.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Afrikaans is the predominant language in Vrede. He does however, indicate that he attended a school that provided instruction in Afrikaans and English, and says his mother exposed him to English at a young age. He has had significant exposure to spoken English. He has also participated in pronunciation refinement training as a drama student. His English dialect, therefore, resembles a young Afrikaans speaker and does not display all the signature characteristics.

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: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: Karina Lemmer

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 18/01/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, I was born in Vrede in the Freestate. I was grew up in a Afrikaans house mainly, but my mother was English. She was brought up English and my father was Afrikaans, so he refused that we were brought up in English. But my mother secretly taught us some English, to some extent, not much. Then I was mainly in a Afrikaans high school and primary school and secondary school, but in high school, I was, um, in high school I was in a double medium school. Which also I talked a lot of English there, because all of our school ensembles was in English, so that got me used to English and then afterwards I came to Joburg to do and then I was obviously very, I spoke a lot of English in Joburg because Joburg is mostly English. Thank you.

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

He does not apply the typical /R/ sound and his use of certain consonants is comparable to that of South African English. Despite this, minor signals such as the deletion of /g/ in “English” emerge. He also replaces the /ɒ/ as in “comma” with an /o/.

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.