England 31

Listen to England 31, a 57-year-old woman from Appledore, north Devon, in southwest England. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 57

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1944

PLACE OF BIRTH: Appledore, north Devon

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: white

OCCUPATION: nurse

EDUCATION: The subject doesn’t say, but we can assume a nursing degree.

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

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): 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:

OK, well I was born in Appledore in 1944, and which was sort of during the war, and by the age of 3 months I was taken out fishing by my parents, uh, in their boat, and from then on I was always on the beach, uh, fishing or looking for crabs or always on the beach, playing around and doing things in boats and things like that. And when I grew, after I grew up and finished me schooling I, I went nursing and became a theatre nurse for, ooh, I forget how long, 13, 14 years, and all the time I lived in Appledore and I was on call for the theatre; I used to have to go, get out of bed and go to work at night and come back again during the day or when we finished and go fishing mostly look after the boats, the chickens, and the fowls and, you know, do lots of things just locally, really. Never went anywhere very much. Well, I had me holidays, always spent it fishing and out on the boats or doing things like that. Well there, uh, uh, there was a lady in Appledore who had a son who thought the world of this son and he was, um, I was to say “our Bert” who’s got “eyes like pearls and skin like Alabaster,” and, uh, then, uh, her son, uh, when her, uh, when he come home with this future daughter-in-law, this Bert, they said to her one day, “What’s her like, what’s your future daughter-in-law got [unclear] like [unclear]?” “I isn’t much to look at, but I got a beautiful set of teeth.” And I could tell you some, uh, what is it they say? Directly, don’t ‘em directly and, uh, she what [unclear] a bit what she go out poaching, and your father used to heave open the window and he used to say, “Cause you be creeping down the street in your welly boots to go out poaching,” and his father had the pub you see down the bottom of the street. And his father used to go down on the quay last thing didn’t ‘im before he locked up. And Jack would be walking up, up the walk [unclear], and he said, “Hey you buggars! You going out poaching again?” And course you’d be there creeping along trying to go along and he’d be shouting out your name, wouldn’t he? Yeah, and whenever he saw me, his father, he’d shout out, “Abby, get your gun, there’s a worm in the garden, lying on his back with his belly to the sun.” Every time he said, didn’t [unclear] he [unclear]. And when me father used to see these women up on Appledore Quay, sitting with their legs up on the rails, like that, didn’t ‘em he used to look up and say, “May, look,” he said, “the map of Clovelly.” And if they had big breasts, I’ll call it proper, he used to say, “By God, look at that woman over there got a fine pair of fenders!”

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:

She and her friend, England 32, reminisce about their childhood in this ancient fishing village and seaport. Note the difference between the formal speech of the reading and the delightfully vernacular dialects she takes pleasure in using in conversation. Note the fairly uniform rhoticity; the dropped “h” of holiday, whose, house, etc.; the higher front starting point for the diphthong of round, house, town, etc.; the dropped “yod” in beautiful, etc; and the very lip-round nature of the vowel in boat, nose, only, etc. Some denasality will be heard in this speaker, quite prevalent in the dialect. For more information on British dialects, visit PaulMeier.com.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

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

The archive provides:

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