Australia 37

Listen to Australia 37, a 17-year-old girl from Sarina, near Mackay, Queensland, Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 17

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/03/2005

PLACE OF BIRTH: Mackay, Queensland

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Australian

OCCUPATION: high school student

EDUCATION: year 12 student in high school

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: none

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/11/2022

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Um, I was born in Mackay, which is not the hospital — the town that I live in [Sarina]; but the hospital here is no good for having babies, so my mum had to go all the way into town. And, er, Mackay: You know how Australians make fun of Tasmanians, like, “oh, incestuous freaks” — yeah, that’s, that’s Mackay people to my town. But, you know, they’re both the same, in the way that they’re full of Italian and Maltese families who came over and own all the cane farms and are like, institutions, and they’ve got so many cousins that at some point when you marry someone it’s gonna start circling round. Yeah, that’s what they mean by incestuous.

And, um, I’m in high school, so we’re supposed to be at like the forefront of linguistic development, right, but we don’t really — we don’t really think of anything, ay. We just kinda repeat what we see on the internet, and it’s really annoying. We have come up with some things, though. Like, a lot of people say “gammin” like, “aw, I’m just gammin with ya.” That’s fun to say; I like saying that. And they say “budoo”; that’s a bit controversial. Um, people say “surely” a lot. They’re like “aw, surely, miss! Surely, sir!” Like that, exactly like that, in that exact tone.

Mackay’s got an interesting history, and I don’t think we talk about it enough, because, like, when we talk about racism, it’s like it’s a faraway thing. I don’t think half the kids — not half, I don’t think most the kids know that, like, people got blackbirded from the islands to here like to work as slaves, in the cane fields. I don’t think they know that the fella, like, Mackay, whatever-his-name-is Mackay: He was a slave owner. We all talk about racism like it’s big, some big faraway thing that happens in, like, America or something and it’s, it’s not. I think that needs to be fixed.

And, um, I’m a bit, like, exterior to like the whole Italian-Maltese family system right ‘cause I’m not from Sarina — that’s where I’m from — um, my dad’s from Wandoan, which is down south. He grew up on a farm. And my mum’s from Rocky, which is also down south. So it’s like a bit weird that people don’t know my cousins; like that’s strange. That, that makes me “other.” But once you’re born here, you have to live here a couple of generations before you’re like, properly in, I think.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/11/2022

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

I tend to slur my words and exhibit vocal grate, typical “teenage girl up-talk,” and use of “like.” I also use interjections typical to Queensland, such as “ay,” and I frequently omit or flap my consonants, add glottal stops, and skip conjunctions.

“Gammin” means joking or kidding, and “budoo” is Murri slang for penis.

COMMENTARY BY: subject

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/11/2022

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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