England Forty-two - Text
This white male, born north London 1957 was recorded by Paul Meier in 2001. The subject, who has a mild Cockney dialect, has lived in East Ham (East London), the Isle of Wight, Denmark, South of France, and, for last several years, in South London, where he works as a car parks contract manager for a local government authority. Although working briefly as a teacher of English as a Second Language, and despite his much travelled life and other possible dialect influences, such as his marriage to a Portuguese woman, he retains a few classic Cockney features among his consonants, notably the use of 'f' and 'v' for the 'th' in words like 'through' and 'although'. This is a quite consistent feature. Notice that on this recording he carefully articulates his 'h' sounds, which were it not for the formality with which he approached the session, might have been elided more frequently. His treatment of 'l' is consistent with Cockney. His vowels, although modified toward RP, are consistent with Cockney. His labialized 'r' is personal and should not be regarded as a feature of his group dialect. Running time 00:05:19
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in London, in 1957, accordingly to my mother within the sound of Bow Bells, near Smithfield Market, she was caught in a pre-Christmas rush, so that’s why I was premature. I was born in St. Bart’s hospital. My family at that time was living in Islington, which is a suburb of North London - very fashionable today – I wish we still lived there. And my parents moved out of London when I was about four, five years of age, and we moved to a new settlement in Dagenhnam, which was a re-development area from the Second World War. It’d previously been a large bomb site, and it was very heavy manufacturing, and the - and the actual site of the Ford’s manufacturing plant. Basically, I stayed there in Dagenham, up until I was about eighteen or nineteen, at which time I left Dagenham and decided to seek newer fields into London. I basically started living around East Ham, Stratford, which is more of the east of London, but quite close to the center. After this some time, I actually managed to go - get a – sorry – to get an eventual teaching job, working on the Isle of Wight, where I taught English as a foreign language for two years, which was quite entertaining. I enjoyed it –uh- much, but I couldn’t afford to live as a full-time career. Mainly we taught English to Scandinavian students: Swedish, Finnish, Norwegian and also, for some unknown reason – Italian. Through this contact, and working for a language school I was able to secure a job in Denmark. And I spent nearly two years living in a place in the north of Denmark, called Âhrhus. After this I also had another opportunity to go the south of France - Bordeaux. After this I decided I wanted to travel and see more of the world. So I decided to basically save money tsk and hitchhike all around Europe, which I did. And then my “piece de la resistance” was to go and spend some time in America, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Having met a lot of American and Canadian people on my travels. I decided that I would go and visit them and I did. I returned back to England in 1984, eighty-five? And found out I was practically unemployable. So, I decided to work for a local authority, um doing rubbish survey projects. I have been with that local authority now for 17 years, and I’m now a car-parks contracts manager – operations. And I’ve also done a business studies degree. So, I’ve had an eventful life in the short time. I’m now married: have been married for the last 14 years. My wife is Portuguese and we have three children.
UNSCRIPTED CONVERSATION TRANSCRIBED BY JAMES SPENCER, February 21, 2008