Australia 52

Listen to Australia 52, an 18-year-old woman from Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.  

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 18

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/03/2008

PLACE OF BIRTH: Sydney, Australia

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Australian and White/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: admin

EDUCATION: high school

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

The subject has never lived outside Australia, and except for eight months on the Gold Coast (south of Brisbane) at age 15, she has never lived outside Sydney. (She moved around Sydney her whole life, living in the Central Business District (CBD), Inner-West, North-West, and South Sydney.)

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Both the subject’s parents grew up in rural New South Wales, in Young and Gunnedah. The subject’s grandfather lived in Grafton and had a regional New South Wales accent. The subject lived with stepfamily of Lebanese descent and lived in a multicultural area, primarily of Middle Eastern and East Asian people.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/04/2026

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, I’m gonna talk about everywhere that I lived growing up. So, I — the earliest I remember, is we built a house and lived in the Ponds, which is in like, North-Western Sydney near Blacktown. Um, we moved after maybe a year to somewhere that was nearby; it was like the suburb nearby or something. Um, and we were renting there. And then, it was maybe the start of Year One [in school], we moved to Leichhardt, in the Inner-West, and I went to a public school there. Um, we were renting, um, like a terrace?

And then, after a little over a year, we moved to Summer Hill, which is also in the Inner-West, and we lived in a, like, unit that was the same block, or the same building that I used to live in before I could remember, back when I was a toddler. Um, I lived in Summer Hill for, I think it might’ve been two years, before we moved to an apartment that we bought in the city in Pyrmont. And we lived there for — it would’ve been maybe a year and a half, and I went to, um, a private school there.

Um, my parents split, so my mum moved about a street away from the apartment, and my dad moved to Redfern, and I started going to a Catholic school in Glebe for the start of high school. So Year Seven. And then, I think it was about half of Year Eight. Then my dad moved down to Oatley, which is like South Sydney. Um, I’m not sure where my mum moved to, because I was living with my dad, and I started going to the local public school because I didn’t want to travel all the way to the city every day.

And then, my mum moved up to the Gold Coast for a couple months; she moved back down to Sydney. She was living in, um, I think it was near Botany, for a bit? She was renting there, and then I moved in with her, and she moved up to the Gold Coast for about a year; it was eight months, I think. And I lived in the Gold Coast with her; that was when I was in Year 10.

And then I wanted to move back in with my dad, so I moved back to Sydney at the end of that year, and he moved to Penshurst. He bought a house in Penshurst, so I was living there. And my mum moved back down, and she stayed around that same area; I’m not sure where. And then I moved out, and now I have my own apartment in the same kind of area but not obviously in Penshurst with my dad. And my mum moved to, uh, where did she move to? It’s near, near Brighton kind of, further down.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/04/2026

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.