England 9

Listen to England 9, a woman in her 30s from Edgworth and Bolton, Lancashire, in northwest England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1968

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bolton, Lancashire

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: teacher, therapist

EDUCATION: university, graduate school

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

The subject also lived in Glasgow and London.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject is well educated, having attended the “posh” school, as she describes it. That might explain her mild dialect.

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

RECORDED BY: Rena Cook

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, my name’s Beth Allen, and I’m from a tiny little isolated village *between Blackburn and *Bolton, *which is north Manchester, and it’s called Edgworth. And, em, I lived there until I was 18, went to primary school there, went to the posh school in Bolton, em, as a secondary school, and so I’m n-not hugely broad. And then went to Scotland for the last fourteen years, so there’s a bit of Scottish in there as well. I did a BA in music performance and specialized in singing, for three years. Em, so I’ve a degree in singing. And then after that I worked for Scottish Opera doing Community Education projects and working as a, a teacher that went in in and out of schools. And then I did a post-graduate in music therapy, which took a year, and for that I came to London. And then, after that, I worked again for Scottish Opera and also in a hospital for profoundly handicapped adults, in Scotland. And I did that for about two years and, em, struggled with the isolation so ended up doing more and more work for Scottish Opera, and eventually they created a post for me, finally taking the hint. And *I then devised projects and worked ’em all round Scotland touring, em, primary and secondary schools, teaching kids about singing and o … dance and, em, drama, and how the three worked together. And after that, when that job started to become too much an administrative job, I decided to set up my own company, so I set up a children’s theatre company called The Happy Gang. And we *performed all over Scotland in theatres and schools, and, em, we did three television series for the BBC, BBC2 Education. Em, and we had a fantastic time, but it was very very hard work, as setting up your own company is. And after about three years, I decided I couldn’t cope any more with the people I was working with, with commuting to Manchester to see my boyfriend, with, em, humphing sets around for two hours before you then did an hour and a half very physical performance and then humphing a set out for an hour, and then driving two hours back to Glasgow. So I, em, had a very unpleasant split from m-my partners and moved to Manchester and then temped for a year and a half as a receptionist. Quite a bright receptionist, I like to think. Quite a bright receptionist, probably a cut above the average. Em, but I enjoyed having no stress and taking n-nothing home and, and that’s about it. And then *it’s taken me that year and a half to really work out how I wanted to use my skills and where I wanted to go from there. Em, the best thing is confirming what I already knew, so telling myself that actually I do have skills and they are useful, and allowing those skills to be challenged and, em, possibly redirected and, em, let them grow a bit so that I actually have more background to those skills, actually know why I’m doing something instead of just instinctively doing it ’cause it feels right. *The part I like the least is, em, *living away from Andy, ’cause I miss him, and I’ve being doing it the last s-seven months; I’ve been in Scotland again, commuting backwards and forwards. OK, The Rainbow Passage …
[* = vocalic pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Kevin Flynn

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/2005

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.