New Zealand 20

Listen to New Zealand 20, a 31-year-old woman from Wellsford and Auckland, New Zealand. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject. 

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 31

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/03/1994

PLACE OF BIRTH: Auckland, New Zealand

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Maori and New Zealand Pākehā

OCCUPATION: lecturer

EDUCATION: master’s degree in creative practice, bachelor’s degree in screen arts

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

The subject has never lived outside New Zealand. From birth to age 3, she lived in Auckland; at age 3, she moved to nearby Manhawhai; at age 5, moved to nearby Wellsford, where she lived until moving back to Auckland proper at age 19. At the time of this recording, at age 31, she was still living in Auckland.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject completed one year of actor training.

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

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/08/2025

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I’m definitely a country bumpkin. I love, um, the quiet, and I love when it’s dark, when you go to sleep. I hate the city lights. Um, but, uh, there is something, you know, downsides to living in a small town, like for my particular interests in creative industries. I mean, I didn’t get — media was not a class I could take at school. Um, and acting at the time was also something I couldn’t do at school either. I had to pay for like after-hours acting classes, and that was how I did Trinity Guildhall exams and everything before, um, you know, coming to Auckland and pursuing, uh, screen arts.

But, um, I loved horse riding. I was a bit — I was a bit into horse riding, like competitively growing up. Um, we lived in sort of like a, a, big old villa on this 10-acre property. So it was just enough for the horses and like a couple of cows, which we called “Quad” and “Bike.” Um, and, uh, we just, yeah, it was very much like we knew the neighbors across the road on the other farms. Um, you knew everyone’s gossip. But in some ways, that’s kind of nice, and I miss that familiarity.

Um, you know, but it’s also so funny. Every time I go home, like, in the city, I’m — oh, I don’t know if I’m supposed to say my real name — but in the city, I’m “Rebecca.” In my hometown, as soon as I go back, I’m “Becky,” like, to everyone there. And it was just this really interesting shift of personalities and dynamics where it’s like, yeah, my whole family, all of the people that I grew up with call me “Becky.” Come to the city, I’m now “Rebecca.” So in some ways I still get to live both lives when I go back home, which is nice.

TRANSCRIBED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/08/2025

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:

• 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).

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