South Africa 4

Listen to South Africa 4, a 22-year-old man from Germiston, South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1976

PLACE OF BIRTH: Germiston, part of metropolitan Johannesburg

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: white, English South African

OCCUPATION: teacher

EDUCATION: We can assume a degree in education and possibly some art instruction.

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The part of Johannesburg that the subject grew up in is very urban and dilapidated in parts. However, from the subject’s unscripted speech, we can assume he received a good education and was exposed to, or at least interested in, the arts.

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

RECORDED BY: Yvette Hardie

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/05/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, well, Germiston is possibly the most horrid place in the whole of  Jo’burg. (uh)  It’s a very urban sort of settlement with very dilapidated homes – nice, big gardens, though.  (uh) Fortunately we had a pool, so we grew up in a very sort of wild atmosphere with bicycles and swimming pools and lots of braai [ed: barbeque grills] and people sitting around fireplaces and smoking cigarettes and drinking beer.  (um)  I went to a nice sort of community-based school called Germiston South Primary, (um) where we participated in sports, we got a regular education sort of set for us.(um) Which is great. [unclear] Many friends, (uh) lots of water sports, (uh)  going to Germiston Lake, rowing, lots of swimming, lots of biking. (um) I’ve lived with my family the whole of my life, my parents are still together, (um) we’re very strongly attached.  I have an older brother, his name’s Greg, and, (uh)  I have two adopted brothers who are Martin and Mark. (um)  Well I must be an outsider in my family because I decided to become an artist, but (um) most of the people in my family are sports orientated which means that most of our time is spent on soccer fields as my brother kicking a soccer ball. Wow! Everyone’s parents were (uh) slowly but surely getting a little bit pie-eyed, which is drunk.  Lots of (uh) jumping in rivers, lots of (uh)  bicycle riding as I’ve said, lots of (uh) letting other people tie us down.  What we did for holidays was basically sit around and watch TV.  We used to get a lot of videos. (Um) We, my father used to love (uh) nature conservation tapes, so we used to watch a lot of that, otherwise just videos that have come out, (uh) on the new circuit. (Um) We spent hours and hours in a swimming pool. Oh and making tree houses, we used to make huge, huge tree houses in the tree of our back garden, which was pretty amazing.  Oh and we also grew up with chickens and ducks, this is all coming back to me. [chuckle]  Chickens and ducks, we used to have chickens and ducks in the back garden which used to freak us out.  You had sheep in the back garden. (uh) You must understand this is a very sort of community-based house so we used to wake up with chickens and ducks cockle-doo-doo-doo-ing in the middle of the morning, which is quite fascinating.  So we used to spend our holidays running off the chickens and my father used to try, he tried one day to cut a chicken’s head off because he wanted to open a business with chickens, but, (uh)  it didn’t work because he felt very sorry about cutting the chicken’s head off because it’s body started running around the garden with no head.  (um) My mother. (uh, ma, uh) I must say my dad’s disabled as well, I suppose, he’s physically disabled.  Broke his back at work.  (uh)  My mother is the bread-winner in the family, she is loony, she is nuts, she’s the one with the chickens and the ducks and who insists on having them.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Elizabeth Terrel

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/04/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Notice the flattened “i” in the first syllables of “physically,” “physicists,” “little,” and “difference” — all pronounced with a slight schwa. Also, the tendency to not use contractions in multi-syllable words such as “considerably” is typical.

COMMENTARY BY: Yvette Hardie

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/05/2000

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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