South Africa 9

Listen to South Africa 9, a 36-year-old woman from Cape and Natal provinces in South Africa. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 36

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1967

PLACE OF BIRTH: Durban, South Africa

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian South African

OCCUPATION: medical scientist

EDUCATION: master’s degree in science

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

Subject was raised in Cape Province and attended university in Cape Town. At the time of this recording, she had lived in Ireland for 10 years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She is undoubtedly influenced by her Irish father and his academic background.

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

RECORDED BY: Vanessa Hyde

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 2003

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 Durban, in the province of Natal in South Africa, um, in the 1960s.  I was the middle child of three children to parents of English and Irish extraction.  My mother’s mother was Irish, from West Cork, and her father was a Yorkshireman.  Both my father’s parents were from County Westmeath.  We grew up in rather an academic household.  Um, my father was a professor at the local university and, um, we were all rather academic, studious children.  My brother and myself attended state boarding schools.  I was at a girls-only school and my brother was at a boys-only school.  My sister had a slightly different option.  She went to a private school and was a day scholar, so went home every day.  At the time that I was at high school, which was in the 1980’s in South Africa, the schools were still segregated, both white and black and English and Afrikaans.  I attended a whites-only girls’ school, English-speaking.  We had to do Afrikaans as one of our subjects; it was compulsory, but none of our lessons were in Afrikaans.  At school, um, my subjects were maths, science, biology, English, Afrikaans, geography, and drama.  I then went on to university in Cape Town where I studied science to master’s degree.  I then came over to Europe where I’ve been living in Ireland for more than ten years.  My family all work in the medical field now and I work for a family medical research company in Cork, which is in south, southern part of Ireland.  Um, my hobbies include horse riding, dramatic arts, sailing, music and writing.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lynn Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/02/2008

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:

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• 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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