Zimbabwe 1

Listen to Zimbabwe 1, a 75-year-old woman from Zimbabwe. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject. 

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 75

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/12/1941

PLACE OF BIRTH: Leicester, England (but lived most of her life in Zimbabwe)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: radiographer (now retired)

EDUCATION: university degree

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

The subject lived in England from birth to 13 years. She has also spent many years in Cape Town, South Africa.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

After moving from England to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) at the age of 13, she remembers having to “adjust” the way she spoke to fit in with her peers. Her elder brother retained his “broad” Leicester accent, whereas she didn’t. She is of the opinion that her English dialect is strongly representative of the “White Rhodesian” community at the time. She has also spent many years in Cape Town and has traveled widely.

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

RECORDED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/10/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

My background: I was born in 1941 in England, in Leicester, right in the middle of England. I had an older brother and a younger sister. My father was in the war — in the Second World War — and he was a pilot who was employed by the RAF to, um, be a test pilot in Rhodesia. And they used Rhodesia because it had 300 flying days per year, er, whereas in England I think it was like 30 flying days per year. So he g- got a taste for the good life, and after the end, at the end of the war, he first of all became qualified as a shoe designer, and then we all shipped off to Rhodesia for the good life and, er, the sun. My mother had arthritis and, and I think the sun was a big, er, drawcard. I was 13 at the time.

I’d been schooled at a grammar school in Leicester so it, it wasn’t a big problem to incorporate, um, schooling in Rhodesia because it was a, a Cambridge external exam-based, um, British system, so it was not a big, a big, ex- except for they, they made me do history and geography, which I hadn’t done; um, I’d done rather languages. I did, um, Italian, I, I think I did French and Latin, um, in — and so, and so instead of all the languages, they made me do history and geography, which I in — I subsequently should have enjoyed, but I didn’t. But anyway, that was that.

At the end of school, I went to university; I wanted to do medicine. I did the first year of medicine under a bursary scheme given by the government of Rhodesia in Nyasaland when that was a federation, but then the federation broke up after my first year, and I lost my bursary. So then I went into radiography, and I was able to, to support myself as a radiographer at a — that’s about it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Nadia Barnard

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/10/2017

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.