Belgium 1

Listen to Belgium 1, a 27-year-old woman from Brussels, Belgium. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 27

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1973

PLACE OF BIRTH: Germany (but raised in Brussels)

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Belgian

OCCUPATION: teaching assistant

EDUCATION: university

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

The subject was born in Germany but raised entirely in Brussels, Belgium. He also spent three years in Mobile, Alabama, United States.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 1999

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 think my basic English has been … uh … given there in the language lab which was horrible because it was kind of four hours of language lab in a row. But … uh … you did learn your English pronunciation there … uh. At the end of my university studies, uh … I gave two years of classes in the University of … uh … Spain, where the students had to have a certain degree of English in order to get their degree in Engineering or pharmacy or whatever. Um, after that we came back to Belgium; … uh … in the meantime I had two kids and I decided to raise my family, so my English was mainly limited to contact with friends or especially friends in the United States. But … uh … I didn’t speak that much English all those years till the moment in 1998 when I got a chance to start an M.A. in drama studies, and … uh … the University College of Dublin and … uh … so I commuted between Brussels and Dublin every week in order to take classes and to do my work over there, and … uh … then of course my … uh … English contacts were weekly and … uh … I think my English increased from that moment enormously, I hope at least. So I … uh … at home we talk Dutch with the children with my husband but also … uh … in my house the contact with English is much bigger than it was when I was a little kid because of all the English movies coming in from the United States with are not dubbed, but which are undertitled, so the original English is heard actually. Also English songs and all kinds of things. So … um … so … uh … the contact with the English .. .uh…, even if you don’t want it, is very very big here in Flanders.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Aaron Champion

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

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).

 

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