Northern Ireland 2

Listen to Northern Ireland 2, a man in his 20s from Ballywalter, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1970s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ballywalter, County Down, Northern Ireland

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Irish/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: university education

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

The subject was born and raised in Ballywalter, Northern Ireland, located on the east coast near Belfast. At the time of the recording, the subject had been attending university for two years in Stirling, Scotland, and was on exchange at the University of Kansas, in the United States, where he had lived for eight months.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

While attending the University of Kansas, the subject took several broadcast-journalism classes, which is evident in his style of reading The Rainbow Passage.

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

RECORDED BY: Erica Reisig

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/12/2000

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, once upon a time, I went on a holiday from hell in Gran Canaria, which is off the coast of uh, uh ea- of West Africa and went with my best friend from school and his family, and we stayed in these apartment complexes and the first night went down to the town you know first time away, on holiday, without my parents, my friend and I had our own apartment so, like free from their parents as well, went down to the town had a great time there was like people in the streets offering uh, you know, “come to our place, free tequila shots, come to our place, free peach schnapps” you know, and it was just like so many lights and people and sound that was fair noise; it was great, so it was.  So it went, uh, went out to like loads of bars, got loads of free shots everywhere, and as the night wore on, you know, it got more and more happy and … more and more legless and it was just, yeah, it was an experience, so it was; my friend was even worse, um, so I had to carry him around all the bars and stuff, ah, but then, on the way home, it was about 3 o’ clock, had a great night so I had, and we’re just staggering back to the uh hotel, and we could have taken one route, which uh, went along the road, windy road up the hill, uh, to our hotel, uh, but we chose, [laughs] in our naïve innocence, to go through the, uh, the park in the middle of the town, the very dimly light park in the middle of the town, it was a shortcut to get to our hotel. So we’re walking along, so we are and, uh, uh, my friend looks over his shoulder and uh, he says uh, “walk a bit faster” and I turn around and see like this group of four guys walking behind us like they’re still a fair distance away, and I said okay, I know, I know, and my friend, he’s pretty, pretty drunk at this point so I’m like carrying him most of the way y’know, and then all of a sudden we hear this running from behind and we look ’round, and we see this guy from the group of four, and hits my friend in the back of the head and kicks him to the ground before, my friend didn’t have a chance, couldn’t react in time uh, so then my friend was on the ground and then, the guy kicked him, came for me I managed … I had more time to react, so I blocked and I hit him back, and then ran, y’know being the good friend that I am [laughs], I mean I hoped that my friend was up and running with me, but looked back and he was still lying feebly on the ground uh, see what is it, as I said, pretty drunk, uh, at this point, the three people were around, they were swarming around my friend, and I though from a distance that they were kicking him and stuff, but they weren’t they were just standing over him holding him down, and then the guy I hit, had run after me part of the way and I ran back and said “leave him alone, leave him alone!” and then the friend says, “no your money first,” y’know, in this horrible sneezy, Spanish accent. Yeah, so uh, I tried to give him a few notes, and then he just grabbed the whole wallet and took it all ,so I just dropped the wallet and ran off and then he ran past my friend and the three guys standing over my friend, then they ran off as well and I went back to my friend and like, he was OK, he was just like, had a, had some bruises on the side where he fell over like it didn’t harm him at all really uh, they’d taken his money as well, so stagger back to the uh, hotel and, um, yeah, it was horrible so it was, so that was the first night we were there, and because the safe in our room uh was broken and it wasn’t going to get fixed the next day, we had all our money on us, and we got all of it stolen, so we had to rely on the generosity of my friend’s parents, and then traveler’s checks, stuff like that; kinda got spoiled the rest of the holiday.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey and Charles Heale

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/03/2008

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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