Beijing 1

Listen to Beijing 1, a 23-year-old man from Beijing, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 23

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/01/1987

PLACE OF BIRTH: Beijing, China

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Chinese (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: university student

EDUCATION: When recorded, he was in his third year at the University of Kansas, U.S.

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject has lived in the United States for three years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject was raised learning to speak Chinese. He began to learn English in middle school while living in China. For his first year and a half at the University of Kansas, he took many ESLP classes, and his English improved.

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

RECORDED BY: Ryan Klamen

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/05/2009

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 living in China, in my family, I have the ch, only child in my, in my home. My father was a businessman; he got a factory for Doomaker Clothes, and my mother was working at Garment. I got one sister and one brother; they old, older than me. Hmm, I was been America for three years. Uh, when I first came here, it was really hard to study English, but I just really want to get hard to practice my English skill. In my free time, I just want play video games, and then watch TV, play basketball. Uh, each Friday I play with all the Chinese friends in gym, and uh when I back I play video games like such as PS3 or X-Box, something. And I usually go out, hang out out with friends to watch movie, especially for hero movie; uh, the best movie I saw in hero is “Saw”; I could even watch for year by year. Uh, this is a good school, in ch- in Kansas in USA; I really glad to choose this school. Because they have a beautiful campus and the professor was really good for teach us and, uh, still ga- I meet a lot of friends and we have party each week. And, uh, I’m past 21, so I can drink a little bit with my friends. Uh, when I graduate in my school year, hmm, I probably move to large city such as San Francisco or New York to have me to finish the job because my major is finance, so I will have my father do some job too.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Ryan Klamen

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/05/2009

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).

 

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