Wisconsin 1

Listen to Wisconsin 1, a man in his 50s from Kenosha, Wisconsin, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1940s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Kenosha, Wisconsin

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: teacher

EDUCATION: university graduate

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

The subject has lived his entire life near the Wisconsin-Illinois border, on Lake Michigan, except for his time in southern Illinois for college.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

His speech has very little pitch variation.

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

RECORDED BY: Cynthia Blaise

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/1999

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 Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is located approximately four miles north of the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, on Lake Michigan. I lived in [unclear] Park, Illinois, which is — the northern border of the town is the Illinois-Wisconsin state line, so I lived, basically all 52 years of my life, within a 15-mile diameter area. About the only time when I was out of this area was the four nine-month periods when I was in college at Southern Illinois University. I majored in mathematics, because it was a sure thing of getting a job at the time. And it still is. I enjoy doing any type of do-it-yourself projects. I’ve built canoes from scratch, sawing the wood into thin strips, and using templates to help shape the hull, edge-cooling them, finishing it by sanding the entire hull, fiberglassing it. I do mechanical work on cars. I completely rebuild engines, transmissions. I’ve done bodywork. I do some electronic work. I just finished building a computer, which I’m ready to put the operating software into, as soon as I get a little bit of extra time. This is during my spare time, which I don’t have much of, except in the summertime, because I teach and generally end up grading papers for two to three hours per evening on the average night during the school year, which is why I  try to avoid that completely during the summer, if I can, just to maintain sanity. …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/10/2007

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).

 

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