South Africa 32

Listen to South Africa 32, a 45-year-old woman from Johannesburg, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 45

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1972

PLACE OF BIRTH: Johannesburg

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Caucasian/South African

OCCUPATION: artist

EDUCATION: university degree

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

Between January 2011 and April 2017, she lived in France (Paris, Ile-de-France), with regular short trips back to South Africa (Johannesburg, Pretoria, and Cape Town).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker was born and educated in the Gauteng region in South Africa (previously Transvaal). She attended Afrikaans schools (in Johannesburg) and university (in Pretoria), but both English and Afrikaans were spoken at home, and she identifies as fully bilingual. She practiced her career mainly in English.

The speaker worked in the field of speech/language therapy and audiology, and subsequently worked as a voice-over artist, recording announcements for telephony/IVR applications. She has been told that her accent does not sound “typically” South African.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/10/2017

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 Johannesburg in 1972, in what was back then still Transvaal, in apartheid-era South Africa. I was brought up in a bilingual home, with an Afrikaans-speaking father and an English-speaking mother. I remember my mother entertaining us with what to me seemed like British-sounding English phrases. She would say things like: “Oh, dash it all” and “nary a bloomin’ word,” and sing that little song: um, “moozy doats and doazy doats and liddle lamzy divy, kiddly divy too, wouldn’t you?” And I always found that very amusing.

I went to Afrikaans schools in Johannesburg and Afrikaans university in Pretoria, and then worked as a speech/language therapist and audiologist in Johannesburg, before doing a stint as a speech and language therapist locum in the UK for four months in 1997. I then moved back to Johannesburg and continued practice mainly in English, um, in Johannesburg. I then changed jobs and started working for a software e-engineering company in, um, Pretoria and started doing some voice-over work as well as some sound-engineering work for that company and subsequently for another company in Johannesburg. Then in 2011, I moved to France, where I lived on and off – mostly on – for six years, um, spoke main- mostly English, but also learned French while I was there. And, uh, I know that I — my accent sounds affected. I’ve been told many times that, uh, people can’t place my accent, um, you know where — where do I come from …

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION: 08/10/2017

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).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.