England 118

Listen to England 118, a 29-year-old man from Bradford, West Yorkshire, England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 29

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/10/1995

PLACE OF BIRTH: Manningham, England (but raised in Bradford)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: British/White

OCCUPATION: software developer

EDUCATION: finished university

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

The subject has never lived outside England. He moved to Leeds about a year prior to this recording but otherwise has not lived outside Bradford (where he grew up) and his birth town of Manningham (which he left as a very young child).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He said that his accent is lighter than his father’s because he grew up in the city of Bradford while his dad and grandfather grew up in more of a rural area near Bradford.

He plays a lot of online games with friends in other countries, such as Germany, France, and Canada). His best friend growing up was American.

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

RECORDED BY: Karen Law (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/10/2025

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, so, um, I started uni, uh, basically straight out of, uh, straight out of high school. Uh, I barely got enough points to pass. It worked on a UCAS system, so every grade you got, you got “x” amount of UCAS. Um, I needed a hundred to go for a foundation year, um, and I got exactly a hundred; I got barely enough.

So I walk up to uni on my first day – I don’t make friends super easily ’cause I don’t wander up to strangers and say hi – but I noticed a dude in the room that was sat on his own that I was on the bus with. Um, he was sat like two rows near me or something on the bus. And so, I wander over, and I sit next to him and there’s kind of silence, awkwardly, for the first moment before I say hi. Um, and that’s, that’s how I meet my first buddy at uni.

And it was just us two for the first few days, and we noticed this other loner that was sat behind us, so I perked up the courage to say hi to him eventually, and that was my second friend at uni.

Um, and so, you know, several weeks into uni, it was just us three weirdo loners that were wandering around campus. Um, we don’t really have any other friends, and that’s when this guy bounces over, who we’re going to call, uh, Snyder, which isn’t his real name; it’s just the first name that came to my head. And so, uh, Snyder is a bit more extroverted, a bit more friendly, so, ya know, probably the second week in uni he walks up and says hi, and he sticks with us the whole time, all the way through uni.

And so, um, we’re a couple of weeks into uni – well, two months into uni at this point – and I turn around to him like, “I don’t remember your name anymore, Snyder.” Um, and he turns to me and says, “I don’t remember yours either.” So, um, we exchanged names again, and that is my introduction to when I went to uni.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Karen Law (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/10/2025

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:

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• 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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