Virginia 14

Listen to Virginia 14, a 33-year-old woman from Rockingham County, Virginia, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 33

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1988

PLACE OF BIRTH: Harrisonburg, Virginia

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Hispanic

OCCUPATION: librarian

EDUCATION: college degree

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

The subject has never lived outside Virginia. (She was raised in Rockingham County, which surrounds the city of Harrisonburg, in the Shenandoah Valley area of Virginia. Well into adulthood, she lived in south-central Virginia.)

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was born with cleft palate (specifically Pierre Robin Sequence). She has an artificially constructed palate and airway. She also had rhotacism (the inability to pronounce “R” sounds).

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/01/2022

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 was born in Harrisonburg, Virginia, and raised in Rockingham County, so pretty much the same area my entire life. I was born with cleft palate, and my particular kind was called Pierre Robin Sequence, or PRS, and essentially that means that the cleft is so large that you just don’t have the roof of your mouth at all. When I was 18 months old, I went to Charlottesville, Virginia, and had surgery done, and they built a palate for me, essentially. Um, apparently, I — we learned years later that they never finished [laughs] the surgery. I was supposed to have a second one that they never told us about. So, my nasal passage is 95 percent blocked off, which is what causes me to be de-nasal, as opposed to most clefties. But honestly I’m fine with that, and I like the sound of my voice, and I don’t want to change that now that I’m in my thirties. [laughs] So, no thanks. I won’t get another surgery.

When I was younger, I had a speech impediment where I couldn’t pronounce my “R”s, so, um, in, you know, trying to say “tractor,” I would say “twactow.” [laughs] And I had to go through speech therapy when I was in first grade. And I still struggle with it sometimes because I’ll pronounce my “R”s as “L”s, um, or vice versa, but, uh, for the most part, I’ve, you know, trained myself out of that habit.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/01/2022

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:

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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.