Washington 2

Listen to Washington 2, a 21-year-old man from Seattle, Washington, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/10/1991

PLACE OF BIRTH: Seattle, Washington

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: The subject was a junior at the University of Washington when he recorded himself for IDEA.

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

He has always lived in Seattle, in the same neighborhood his whole life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Influences include listening to music and watching movies a lot, even though he doesn’t think his speech has been influenced much by either of those activities. Subject says he spends a lot of time with friends and that his use of a basic colloquial American language has influenced his speech a little bit.

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

RECORDED BY: Subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/04/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, I was born in Seattle, Washington. Uh, I’ve lived there my whole life, and, uh, I was raised in the neighborhood of Fremont, which is about five to ten minutes, uh, north of the downtown area. It’s really close to a bridge, the Aurora Bridge, and, uh, Fremont, has, you know, just a great culture about it; it’s got a lot of good restaurants, uh, and, compared ta I would say the rest of Seattle, it’s got some of the nicest people. A lot of Seattle kinda gets a bad wrap because, um, we’re very kind of cold. Like if you were walkin’ down the street and you see somebody, uh, very rarely will you ever have that other person like acknowledge you, so, uh, I think it’s cool to be from Fremont because, you know, there, were very outgoing and, you know, we acknowledge your existence. Uhh, my mother is from Missoula, Montana. My dad is from Danville, Illinois, two places where there aren’t very many Jews, and my mom and dad are both Jewish, so I was raised Jewish. I had a bar mitzvah, even though I wasn’t, I haven’t been very religious, I still identify with the Jewish culture and consider myself a Jew. And, um, it’s kind of funny because I’ve gone to school, you know, in Seattle ’round my neighborhood for elementary school, middle school, high school, now college at the University of Washington; they’ve all been within like a 5-mile radius it seems of the other, like none of, none of the schools are much further than ten minutes away. So, umm, I’ve kind of kept it close to home, I guess you could say. My influences on speech, uhh, I’ve gone to like inner-city schools were there have been, umm, you know, very diverse groups of people. At my middle school, there was about a 30-percent split between African-American, White, and Asian, so, you know just a lot of colloquialisms that you’ll hear all the time and at my high school it was like the same thing, 30, 30, 30 with, with all those ethnic groups. So, I’ve definitely got my dose of, of, the not necessarily the street language but, you know, of the everyday type of language that you hear around people, uh, of that age group. Uhh, funny kind of idioms that you’ll hear are such things as, um, you know “I’m trying to do this,” like instead of saying I want to do this you’ll say “I’m trying to do this,” “I’m trying to go to the store,” “I’m trying to go to the movies,” “I’m trying to see what this girl is, doing tonight,” stuff like that. And uhh, yea you know, then you’ll say “hella” a lot, which is a very West Coast thing. Umm, as far as culture, my friends I’ve, you know, when we’re not hanging around at each other’s houses just talkin’ and kickin’ back, uhh, we’ll go play basketball, uh, either at Greenlake or a local community center and a lot, uh, you know a lot of my life was just playing basketball, has, has been playing basketball with my friends.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION: 02/04/2013

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.