Pennsylvania 12

Listen to Pennsylvania 12, a 20-year-old woman from Upper Saint Clair Township, near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/12/1998

PLACE OF BIRTH: Upper Saint Clair, Pennsylvania (southwest of Pittsburgh)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: college student

EDUCATION: college sophomore

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

The speaker had been living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, for two academic years at the time of this recording. Otherwise, she has spent her entire life in and around Pittsburgh.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker’s mother is from Pittsburgh, and her father is from the San Francisco Bay area, in California.

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

RECORDED BY: Mia Taylor (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/01/2019

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 had a really good childhood. We were a pretty well-off family, so my mom and dad, and my mom and dad were very loving. Um, they had a really good relationship, and so I had a really happy childhood, and …

Uh, I like the downtown area but, eh, no, no, downtown’s my favorite. Yeah [laughs], like theater district, in particular. … Um, I just have a lot of good memories of like going to get lunch down there with friends or, um, going to like a show with my, my mom and sister. Um, yeah, we’re we’re a big musical-theatre family; we’re a bunch of nerds so …

Uh, high school was a strange experience. Um, my freshman year was rea-, really good; um, I had a lot of upperclassmen friends, um, so I mean it was — I feel like it was a pretty typical freshman year. Um, the adjustment was difficult especially with math I remember being hard, but, um, it was fine. And then sophomore year, uh, like the second week into school, my mom died, um, of lung cancer, and so obviously that sucked. But, um, the year actually ended up being my second favorite year of high school because, uh, everybody was just kinda gathered around me and I felt like I had a lot of really good, close friends, um — and, granted, a lot of them were older, but still like I felt like I kinda had a place. Um, and then junior year a lot of my friends had graduated at that point, and, um, it just was a really hard academic year and just was not a good time. Um, but senior year was great; um, I got a lead in the musical; I was on varsity for both teams; I had a boyfriend; like, it was — senior year was great; that was by far my favorite year. …

So I grew up in Upper Saint Clair, which is definitely an uppity community. Um, definitely a higher, like m-, like, what is it? Upper-middle class? Yeah, upper-middle class community, um, a little bit wealthier, but I will say compared to like the Midwest — so I go to college at Marquette — and compared to the people who are like, uh, upper-middle class there, Pittsburgh is so much better. Um, they’re all so like, snobby, and I thought like Upper Saint Clair kids could be snobby and like rich and all that, but they’re like snobby without even realizing it; like at least the kids here who are snobby like know like, “Yeah I’m a rich, snobby asshole,” but, like, they don’t realize it. So, yeah, um, but everybody’s always been really good to me and my family, and … yeah …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Mia Taylor (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/01/2019

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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