Belarus 2

Listen to Belarus 2, a man from Polotsk, Belarus. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: N/A

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Polotsk, Belarus

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Belarussian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: N/A

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

The subject lived in Canada for an unspecified amount of time.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Mark Ingram

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/08/2008

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’m from Polotsk, Belarus.  It’s a town of about 200,000 people, um … I think it’s third largest in the country.  Belarus, as you probably know, is a … it’s former Soviet Republic with Latvia, then it separated and all that stuff.  Anyway, like my town Polotsk, we have uh … uh, there’s cathedrals, only three in the world, and one of them is in my town.  The cathedral is around 1400 years old, and it’s been — like, the wall’s I think about …15 meters of brick and cement walls, so all the wars, everything still stands to this day.  Um … we have a river that goes to the Baltic Sea … and, um, me and my friends once tried to go to for a journey, but we, we only could take on the water about three hours, ’cause the boat was from like wo-wood … wood stuff, we just didn’t have anything, and uh, like a pirate ship, a mini pirate ship.  But yeah, we didn’t make it, far [laughs]; we made it to the next town, almost drowned in the process, so we just decided not to do it anymore.  And what else can I say?  The food, um, the food is great, I think.  Everyone likes it because it’s similar Canadian food and American food, um, a lot of fat, lot of carbohydrates — a lot of good stuff basically.  Um, I’ve been in Canada for about uh … five years straight, since I was 13-18, and the on and off for about two more years.  So I’ve been speaking English for five years straight, and then like drastic change between those dates.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/03/2008

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.