Fiji 5

Listen to Fiji 5, a 41-year-old woman from Lautoka, Fiji. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 41

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 28/09/1966

PLACE OF BIRTH: Lautoka, Fiji

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Indian

OCCUPATION: owner of a homestay

EDUCATION: tertiary-level education

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

The subject left Fiji at the age of 19 and moved to Auckland, New Zealand. Six years later she moved back to Fiji and lived in Suva.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject spent many extended visits with relatives from California.

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

RECORDED BY: David Nevell

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/07/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, um, I’ll, I’ll tell you one thing that deals … relates … to how I speak and everything.  My family, uh, a lot of members of my family, uh, migrated to America.  And my grandfather worked for United Airlines, so, um, the family had an opportunity to come back all the time.  And…we lived in Fiji, and, um, we had all our cousins come to visit us.  And … by the time they left they all had American accents.  It was funny.  It was really, really funny.  But we learned … Because _____________.  It wasn’t actually rural, but we lived in a country …. town, and everything.  And, um, my parents were not that educated.  I mean their English was just pretty standard.  They could communicate.  So that was our learning. And … can you imagine, to American English? Yeah, oh … they were from California.  And I just remember the things that they … people would say.  “Where are you from?”  I said “Oh, I used to blame you and _____________ for ___________.”  Because they would come … they’d come…  I mean home on the holidays for three months at a time.  So they’d come and spend their entire time here.  And by the time they left … I mean we were trying to emulate them.  Believe me.  It was…  And, um, uh, yeah.  So, then I went to a Methodist school. Which was a very big cross section.  And, um, of, um, Fijians, Indians, and all the mixed races.  And it’s considered one of the top schools for all girls.  And, um, then when I went to New Zealand — and that’s when you find that “Can you say that again?”  You know, our pronunciation is very… Um, some schools do. In some schools in Suva area you find that their English is so … like the Queen’s English.  But we…we’re, um … I had trouble when I was growing up, you know, to have access to that.  We just had … we only learned what we were taught at school.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Joe Calarco (under supervision of David Nevell)

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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