Wyoming 6

Listen to Wyoming 6, a 58-year-old man from Lovell, Wyoming, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 58

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/06/1958

PLACE OF BIRTH: Powell, Wyoming

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: wastewater superintendent

EDUCATION: some college

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The speaker was born at a hospital in Powell, Wyoming, and raised for 18 years in nearby Lovell, Wyoming. He then spent two years in Laramie, Wyoming, followed by two more years in Lovell, and back to Laramie for one year. He spent one year working in Denver, Colorado, and then returned to Lovell for two more years. He then spent one year in Boise, Idaho, followed by two more years in Lovell. He then lived in Loveland, Colorado, for two years and finally spent 26 years in Fort Morgan, Colorado.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker is an outgoing individual. He performs in his church plays and enjoys telling stories, which is evident in the way he reads Comma Gets a Cure.

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

RECORDED BY: Deric McNish

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/05/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

The end. … Small, boring, conservative, Mormon, pretty, scenic area. Class of 60, 70 in our high school. That’s a good one — I don’t know. A lot of the phrases I make up myself. … Uhhh, the Lovell dish was whatever my mom made: meat and potatoes, uh, tuna on toast. There were really no restaurants. When we were older, there was tacos from the Scoop Drive-In. Uh, no pizza. You ate at home. We could eat a hamburger at the Rose Bowl; that was a treat.

Uh, the one closest: my sister Ruth. She had a Barbie doll, and I had a G.I. Joe. And we, when my two older sisters would play with me when I was littler, but I don’t remember because Betty was 10, almost 11 years older than I was. Uh, Steven: seven years younger. So, mostly playing was teasing Steven. [Subject laughs.]

I had, uh, friends on where we lived on the hill. So I played a lot of baseball with them. Baseball was — did you ever see the movie Sandlot? Or not san- … was it Sandlot? That was kinda us. We, we made our own baseball field in the back of their house and played baseball all day long. What’s — seventh, eighth grade, yes. I didn’t. I was — I was outgoing, and the class clown, but when it came to girls I was shy, and, so I didn’t really approach them. I did go to this movie with this girl …

Uh, small, fun, knew everybody. Um, if you wanted to be involved in something, it was all Mormon related, but good group of kids. Most of them were Mormons, so they were always off with their Mormon activities. Uh, didn’t know it at the time; it was just life the way it was. They had all — they had couple boy scouts at the Mormon Church, and they all went to the Mormon Church, and they were all Mormon. Never did. I didn’t realize ’til actually it was my 40th reunion. And it’s still the same. They’re all — they’re all talking about the Mormon Church, and I felt out of place.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Shane Bruno (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/06/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Lovell is located near the northern border of Wyoming, only 17 miles from Montana. Because of its proximity to Montana, speakers in Lovell exhibit some elements of the North-Central American English dialect, but they mostly use Western American English. The speaker has a slight but noticeable drawl, elongating his vowels and demonstrating an overall folksy and unhurried speech patterns. The elongation can be heard in the short “e” sound in the word “stressed” (the speaker does not exhibit the pin-pen merger), the “aw” sound in words like “dog,” “long,” and “strong.” The “u” sound in the word “tuna” is elongated and fronted, a Western American English characteristic. The “o” in “toast,” “Rose Bowl,” and “Joe” is rounded and elongated, which a mixture of Western and North-Central (a hint of Canadian) sounds. He retains the diphthong for “I” as in “life” and “shy,” which is a North Central rather than Western characteristic. Wyoming speakers have been known to change the “a” in “cat” to “e” in “bet,” but this speaker doesn’t exhibit that trait. Note the “ee” sound in the second vowel of “liking.”

COMMENTARY BY: Deric McNish and Shane Bruno

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/07/2017

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.