DOI: 10.25910/jkwy-wk76
title: The speech of Australian adolescents: research data and recordings collected by A.G. Mitchell and Arthur Delbridge in 1959 and 1960
title: The Mitchell and Delbridge tapes

description: This dataset comprises 22,187 recordings of Australian English as spoken by 7736 students at 330 schools across Australia, collected 1959-1960 and specific information about the speakers. The recordings were made on reel-to-reel tapes and were used to create the 1961 publication ‘The pronunciation of English in Australia’ and the 1965 publication ‘The speech of Australian adolescents’.

The original reel-to-reel tapes were digitised by the National Film and Sound Archive, transferred to DAT recordings, and the digitised version was reissued as an online database 'The Mitchell and Delbridge tapes' by the University of Sydney in 1997-1998. The website included contextual documents and annotations to the online database, included in this dataset.
description: SA tapes = 40 tapes of 35 schools (39 recordings)

QLD tapes = 69 tapes of 58 schools (68 recordings)

NSW tapes = 107 tapes of 160 schools (186 recordings)

VIC tapes = 70 tapes of 57 schools (89 recordings)

TAS tapes = 14 tapes of 12 schools (12 recordings)

WA tapes = 10 tapes of 8 schools (10 recordings)

Schools were sometimes recorded twice or the recording was split across two tapes. Ultimately there were 402 separate recordings of 330 schools on 297 tapes.

Additional Notes:

Materials:

Despite the careful instructions, not all recordings have the requested materials. Mitchell & Delbridge established the set of 6 vowels that they considered would demonstrate divergence in speaker accents, if an accent existed. These 6 vowels were elicited through the 6 words - "beat boot say so high how". Two sentences were also designed to elicit dialect type differences in a larger context. In the digitised versions the set of words was labelled "s1" - the sentences "s2" & "s3".- and the continuous speech "n."

For example, the recordings for student number 7736 would be labelled

S7736s1.wav

S7736s2.wav

S7736s3.wav

S7736n.wav

Repeat Recordings:

Some schools were recorded twice. Several schools in the Brisbane area used a recording facility at the QLD University. Unfortunately, there was a problem as the recording supervisors did not use the script sent by M&D and thus the students did not produce a set of materials comparable to that produced by other pupils from other schools. Instead, these QLD students recorded monologues. They were re-recorded later at their home school. From examination of the paper records, it appears that the second recording did not always include the same students. As there are no names or identifying features in the records, there is no way of knowing which students were recorded twice, so each student recording of this type was given a separate UID. If it seemed that a match between recordings of a student could be achieved (based on rather unique historical records matching), then a note about the possible match was made in the miscellaneous column.

Tape Numbering and Naming in the M&D project:

All the tapes were numbered. A copy of the list of these tapes for all the States is in the Appendix. There are missing 'numbers' in the tape lists. Delbridge reported that some schools recorded on the wrong side of the tape, or the recording was so low in volume, or of such poor quality, that it was rendered unusable. The numbers for these tapes will be missing as the tapes were then reused and re-numbered.

It is not uncommon for several schools to be on the one tape, especially in Queensland. This arrangement is reflected in the numbering of the DATs.

Numbering of tapes will be, for example, n79; q60_61; s35a; s35b; s35c. The alphabet character refers to the State, n=NSW q=QLD v=VIC s=SA w=WA t=TAS. Tape number "X_Y" indicates the material for this school carries across 2 tapes; Tapes numbered 'X' 'Xa' may refer to a repeated recording. Alternatively, this may refer to the fact that there is more than one school on a tape. The name of the school will decide this.