Pennsylvania 5

Listen to Pennsylvania 5, a 50-year-old man from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1950

PLACE OF BIRTH: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: N/A

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject attended private boarding schools.

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

RECORDED BY: Lynn Watson

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/11/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Many years ago, on the Fourth of July, I saw Jimi Hendrix play.  It was about five or six months before he died, and what a night.  The Second Atlanta Georgia Pop Festival had about 300,000 people there.  Jimi Hendrix played on Saturday night, real late.  And I was with a whole buncha people, and when we heard him play; it just didn’t seem real.  He was barely moving about the stage.  I thought it had to be backed up by tape machines.  I just couldn’t believe ’t one person could be making all that noise.  So I hiked all the way up to the stage, couple hundred yards, climbing over bodies and people, to see with my own eyes if this was really true, an’ I couldn’t believe it, but he was doing it, the whole thing.  He played the “Star-Spangled Banner.”  Fireworks were going off over top of the stage.  It was amazing.  Few years later, I was at another big concert up in New York; and, uh, heading back out of the concert area, I was trying to get out.  I had hitchhiked in.  Don’t I get picked up by a great big bread van, which is holding the Rolling Stones inside, heading to the airport, and they gave me a ride in the back of the air- … back of the van.  All the way to the airport, I rode with the Rolling Stones.  The traffic was so busy ’t people would’ve stopped the limousines, ’se there’s too many people on the street.  You couldn’t get through in a limousine.  They came to … like the Beatles used to do, arrive an’ leave in bread trucks and armored cars.  [Laughs]  Lots and lots of fun.  Keith Richards is a tremendous bore.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 02/07/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Although the interviewer was not informed until the recording was over, the story about the Rolling Stones was concocted on the spot. Regarding the subject’s dialect, /r/ and /l/ tend to be labialized, while /r/ also tends to be retroflex and /l/ also tends to be rhotacized. There is an occasional diphthongization on mid back rounded vowel /O/ (off-glide), as in “dog,” and an occasional diphthongization by adding slight /I/ before /u/ (on-glide), as in “goose.”

COMMENTARY BY: Lynn Watson

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/11/2000

The archive provides:

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  • 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).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.

 

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