Czech Republic 5

Listen to Czech Republic 5, a 23-year-old woman from Prague, Czech Republic, or Czechia. 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): 31/08/1989

PLACE OF BIRTH: Prague, Czech Republic

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Czech

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: B.A.

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject was born and raised in Prague.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Czech is her first language, and, at age 6, she began learning English from a Czech English teacher in primary school. She also speaks German and Italian.

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

RECORDED BY: Victoria Rough (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/04/2012

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY:  N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Yes, uh, uh, I am the only child in my family. Uh, yeah, I was born twenty-two years ago, and I li- … right now I live alone, but before I lived with my parents. Well, we had something like American high school, but it’s called gymnasium. The, I think I went there, but people can also decide to go to some special school, which is like over the, oriented to something, and they can go to, uh, I don’t know … to school oriented in business, or if they wanna work manually they can go to this school, but gymnasium is more like high school here, and it’s oriented to prepare you for college. I think that America, it’s like, generally bigger in everything. I mean like the country’s obviously bigger, like the, the streets and also the grocery and everything is like, bigger, and I think people are much more confident here than people in Czech Republic, but I think that’s because of the size of everything, you know? Uh, the, this story’s basically, uh, my parents, they both really like sports. My mother was a water skier, and my dad was doing some wild-river canoeing or something like that, and they wanted me to do something, some sport like that, but I really don’t like water and stuff, so I decided, like, to start dancing. But I really wasn’t a good dancer to beginning, and I was like a child, and I was always in the last row, you know, in the choreography, and the coach really didn’t question it, but I was, like, stubborn, I was, like, no, I can do this: I can be a dancer. And during the years it really developed like, good ability to dance, and in, then the end in 2004, me and my dance team, we won, uh, first p- … we were first, on the first place in our championship, so that was really cool. Duh, it was like the satisfaction after like, my parents say, “Oh, you can’t do that; you know, that’s not the sport for you,” and stuff. And they always wanted like, they says like, real sport. … I lived in part of Prague called Břevnov [?], and my parents lived in part of Prague called [unclear]. [Subject speaks in Czech.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Victoria Rough (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/04/2012

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.