Washington 7

Listen to Washington 7, a 34-year-old woman from Olympia, Washington, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject. 

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples. IDEA is a free resource; please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 34

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/06/1991

PLACE OF BIRTH: Olympia, Washington

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Caucasian

OCCUPATION: graduate student

EDUCATION:

The subject has a bachelor of arts degree in education and was pursuing a graduate degree at the time of this recording.

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

The subject lived in Tennessee during the COVID-19 pandemic for a couple of years, as she has family in that area.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She has received acting training and studied education. Depending on the environment (classroom, stage), her vowels may change. Her mother is a military child, and that might have affected her speech by making it more formal.

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

RECORDED BY: Andrew Keller (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/11/2025

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

When I was little I, um, I had this tree outside my window — the window of my bedroom — that was a holly tree. And I remember when I was very young that it would sometimes snow, like in, usually in January or February, and I would wake up in the morning and notice that the light was different in my bedroom, and would go to my blinds — which were this atrocious like lime-green color — and open them up and look out at my holly tree because it was blocking most of my window, so I couldn’t really see if it snowed except if there was snow on the holly leaves. And I just I, I became really affectionate about this tree. I thought of it as having a personality, and I called it “Holly” because clearly that’s the name that a holly tree should have. And sometimes birds would come and nest in the tree. I think I had a family of robins around the time I was six, and I just kind of fell in love with this tree. It was my buddy, my companion, and it was a really significant marker of time because you could see if it was raining, if there was water dripping off the leaves, or if it was snowing. And, um, I remember waking up one day and just feeling like something was off and going to the window and opening those blinds and looking out, and my tree was gone, and I came to realize that my dad had cut down the holly tree that morning while I was still sleeping because apparently holly is an invasive species and it’s pretty destructive. But, you know, 6-year-old me didn’t know that, so I was pretty devastated at the time, um, but, you know, loved that tree. …

So I lived in Tennessee, just outside of Knoxville for, like, a couple of years, and, uh, I don’t really think that that impacted my voice very much, mostly because it was during the pandemic and I was primarily in the house with my parents — the people who I grew up with — so I don’t really think that my voice changed very much from that. I will say that I do sometimes find, um, like, if I’m around someone who speaks with a Southern accent specifically, uh, an East Tennessee Southern accent, I can find myself sort of starting to morph some of my vowels around them. But for the most part, I, I don’t think that my voice has changed very much because of that.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Andrew Keller (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/11/2025

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).

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