England 28

Listen to England 28, a 30-year-old man from Hatfield, Hertfordshire, England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1971

PLACE OF BIRTH: Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire, England (but raised in Hatfield)

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: White

OCCUPATION: publisher

EDUCATION: university

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

The subject was raised in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, lived five years in Brighton and two years in Bath, traveled around the United States, and was residing in Twickenham at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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): 10/06/2001

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 was born in 1971, which makes me 30. I was born in, uh, Welwyn Garden City and grew up in Hatfield. Hatfield’s an area just north of London and is fairly quiet. The fairly suburban, fairly backwater, I’ve since school. School was local in a little village-school type town school followed by school in another town, Hertford. Sharing a similar old boy with Biggles. Biggles apparently was effectively written as having, uh, being taught at the school I went to, so, uh, from the ages of 11 to 18. Then I left there; I went to Brighton; uh, Brighton was my university town, which is a great place to be a student and, uh, was out partying around that area for four years; followed on by moving home to travel around the States to visit yourself. Then, uh, came back and, uh, got a job in magazines. So since five years, 1995, I’ve been working in magazines. So I’ve worked some in all sorts, from distribution work in things like “Vogue” and “GQ” through to like [unclear] “The Economist,” “Viz” [unclear], and I’ve since moved from there to Bath. Spent two years in Bath where I was, uh, among the Brazil set [unclear], and, uh, did official Playstation circulation and product management. From there I moved on to Brighton, back there to be with, uh, old friends back down on the south coast and stayed for a year working on small woodworking magazines. Then went off traveling around Australia, brings up the current day where I’m now living in Twickenham, home of Rugby and working on magazine “Auto Car” and “Practical Caravan,” where the two don’t necessarily sit together, but I’m publishing manager of them both, trying to flog as many of them as possible to the unsuspecting public get me occasional, uh, promotion sorted out, few cars free here and there to nice happy winners, even though people will complain when you give them a free holiday. Um, yep, so that takes me through the current day. And my girlfriend lives in Bedford, so I have to travel around quite a bit going up there to see her and her coming down to see me, so we travel the country a fair amount, and a bit of the world being seen.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Cali Gilman

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/02/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

His accent in typical of the new Standard English, the so-called Estuary English. Notice the slight glide in words like “treatment” and “magazines.” Also notice the vowel quality of “goose” and “school.” In addition, there are other vowels that show the cross-fertilization of Cockney with the new prestige dialect of Southeast England. For an interactive transcription of this sample, see Eric Armstrong’s flash presentation on his site (http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/courses/dialects/rp/contemporaryrp.html).

If you are a dialect researcher, or an actor using this sample to develop your skill in a more traditional Standard British English dialect, please see my instruction manual at www.paulmeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/06/2001

The archive provides:

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• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
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