California Two - Text
The speaker is a twenty-one year old female university student. Her parents are Lebanese but she was born in Southern California and grew up in Orange County. After speaking the Rainbow Passage she talks briefly about where she has lived and about her reaction to hearing other Southern California speakers at her workplace. Her accent is very typical of her age group. The articulators are comparatively lax with the jaw slightly raised from a relaxed position. There is obvious tongue root retraction as a characteristic tongue posture, resulting in persistent glottal fry on the last words of phrases. A strong tongue-bunched post-vocalic 'R'. A raising (or closing) of front vowels, especially before nasal consonants like 'M' or 'N' or in an 'AR' combination: note for example 'end of' and 'Aristotle'. Little or no lip rounding on back vowels: for example, 'would be no more universal floods'. The speaker uses the 'caught/cot' merger throughout: note 'which causes the'. Almost all final 'T' plosives are rendered as stopped glottals. All vowels are relaxed toward a mid-central placement except that the characteristic tongue retraction and bunching causes the stressed 'Uhh' sound to raise toward the 'good' vowel when the sound precedes 'L', as in 'the result'. The pitch range is limited and there is not much contrast between stressed and unstressed words. Emphasis is achieved through stretching syllables and through pauses between words. The speaker has a tendency to drop pitch and volume sharply on the final word of a phrase, but nearly half the sentences show no downward pitch during any of the last few words, and occasionally a clearly declarative sentence will have a slight upward inflection at the end.
Recorded and edited, 2002, Dudley Knight. Running time 00:02:36.
TRANSCRIPTION
I lived in Mission Vieijo for 18 years, and that’s in southern Orange County. (Um) And for the past three years, I’ve been living in San Juan Capistrano. And (um) It’s a little different, I think, ’cause it’s closer to the beach. (Um) I work at a bank, which is near the beach. And I-- I observe a lot of people coming in, and talking to them, and they have a-- a lazy way of talking, I’d say. (Um) The beach bum’s kind of… It’s a… So it’s interesting working near it, talking to people, communicating, and hearing different types of dialects. (Um) I think it’s a more-- a lazier way of speaking, down here… (Um) Compared to, I’d say, eastern or mid-western accents. (Um) I think that they pronounce consonants more. We just kind of let it flow.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, January 23, 2008