Australia 6

Listen to Australia 6, a 20-year-old man 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: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1979

PLACE OF BIRTH: Sydney, Australia

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: N/A

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

He was an exchange student in Kansas, in the United States, at the time of this recording. Until he came to the United States, he had lived his entire life in Sydney.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He describes his mother as half English.

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

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/11/1999

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I’ve been, I’m about 20 years old; I’m an exchange student here from Sydney, Australia, and, um, I’ve lived all my life in Sydney, been brought up, … my parents were, er, brought up in Australia although my mother is half English, and at the moment, ah, they’re living … we’re living in Randwick, the suburb called Randwick, which is very different to the suburbs here in Lawrence Kansas, um, namely because we live on a main road; there are lots of main roads and although the best thing about it is we’re about ten minutes away from Bondi Beach and the beaches are something spectacular. Everyone keeps asking me over here, “What about the beaches, what about the beaches?” But I mean, er, er, we’re I almost take it for granted because we’re about ten minutes away from the beach and so, ah, that’s where I ‘m from.  We used to live in a suburb, um, called Waverly, which is near the beach and I was about four years old and I was climbing up the tree in the back yard and I actually remember falling and, er, I broke my arm. And actually, two weeks later, um, when I came home from the hospital I broke it again because I fell off a chair. So I was quite a clumsy four year old. Um, I’ve changed quite a bit then [meaning since then] but, um, that’s probably one of my earliest memories. I vividly remember falling down the tree. It wasn’t a long distance but I vividly remember it and being taken off to the hospital.  We live in a part in Sydney called the Eastern Suburbs. It’s perceived as a very multi-cultural, um, demographic area, and it’s actually mostly upper class. We’re, uh, sort of middle class and some of the suburbs there, you have Randwick, you have Belleview Hill [sp?], which is the sort of up market area, Double Bay, Watson’s Bay, and these are all sort of on the coastline. But just in from that you have Randwick and Waverly, and Bronte [sp?] (some people pronounce it Bron-TAY but it’s actually BRON-tee). Um, er, that’s where a lot of the schools are around and then you go into more the city where you have Centennial Park, Alexandria, Zetland [sp?], Waterloo, suburbs like that.  So the typical…you’d go down to the pub and you’d say, “Hey mate, hey mate, can I have a Foster’s?” “Sure, that’ll be two bucks.” OK, so they hand it over, you don’t have to tip or anything like that and um, er, then if you’re with a couple of friends, you’d say, “Hey mate! Ya pissed yet?” Ya know, ya pissed yet.  And you’d say, “No not yet, get us another Foster’s.” I mean Foster’s is just one that comes to mind. I mean you’ve got Swan which is the (unclear) the beer in Western Australia. You’ve got Toohey’s, um you have, er, what are some of the other ones, er, er, I’m not a big beer drinker, I’m more of a wine and Champagne person, which is really big there as well. It’s almost a big cultural event where all the guys would pack into the pub and watch the football game and drink Toohey’s and Foster’s and whatever you have. Any other slang? I’m just trying to think of some more actually. I mean there’s a lot with the barbecue, the barby, put a shrimp on the barby, I mean the shrimp, the shrimp is … it’s a prawn, but I mean the typical Australian barby is something quite unique.

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in the accent, please see my instruction manual at www.paulmeier.com. As the speaker in this sample is a unique individual, it is highly unlikely that he will conform to my analysis in every detail. But you will find it interesting and instructive to notice which of my “signature sounds” and “additional features” (always suggested only as commonly heard features of the accent) are widely used by most speakers of the accent or dialect, and which are subject to variation from individual to individual.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/11/2016

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