Wales 3

Listen to Wales 3, a 91-year-old woman from Treharris, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales, United Kingdom, and also from southern England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 91

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1916

PLACE OF BIRTH: Treharris, Merthyr Tydfil, Wales

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: retired housewife

EDUCATION: some secondary school

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

The subject left school, and Wales, at age 14, and has spent much of the past few decades living in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Marina Tyndall

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/12/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

What’s er, is that the finish? [Interviewer: Yeah.] Oh, that’s nothing to read. [Interviewer: So where were you born?] Er, Treharris, in er, South Wales. A mining village. And I lived there, went to school, till I was, just turned 14. And then I went to London, in service, and I’ve been away from Wales since I was 14. I was in London for a long time, private service. Then I went to work in a ladies’ club, as, erm, waitress in a dining room. And then from, uh, then on, I, uh, went into, uh, with a friend of mine, went to Reading, to a biscuit factory, Peek Freans biscuit factory, in Reading. Packing biscuits for the forces. And then I, er, went back to London. And ah, went to, erm, er, where was it, Clacton, Cl-, for a holiday, and met my husband. And got married.

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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 living in England for many years, the subject retains a number of original dialect features with varying degrees of subtlety. She exhibits plenty of lip movement, distinctive pitch shifts (this is more noticeable in the unscripted segment), extra lengthening of vowels, and a tendency to give more volume and length to unstressed syllables, lending two-syllable words an almost spondaic quality (fourteen, forces, London, Clacton). Also note the following: a tapped and approximant R in free variation; strong aspiration of /p, t, k/; close, lip rounded NURSE vowel; light / l/ allophone used before both vowels and consonants; /n/ ending on “ing” verb endings (workin(g), likin(g), minin(g), readin(g)); slightly suspending the “hold” (closure) stage of the plosives in “expect,” “vet,” “foot,” and “mouth”; and little or no elision in polysyllabic words (te-rri-to-ry, un-san-i-ta-ry, transcript).

COMMENTARY BY: Marina Tyndall

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/12/2007

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.