Finland 1

Listen to Finland 1, a 26-year-old woman from Turku, Finland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 26

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Turku, Finland

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Finnish

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: some college

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

She lived in the United States for a year when she was 17. She moved back to the United States after finishing some college.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has a mild Finnish accent and feels she is quite “Americanized.”

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:

Um, I was born in Turku, Finland, ah, in 1973. I am the only child, and, um, I guess that’s where I mainly lived all my life, up until when I was 17 I came here for a year to be an exchange student. And then went back to home and finished high school and I guess went to college for a little bit and then, uh, came back here, and got married, and I’m staying here now. So, getting Americanized I guess. I would definitely pick the summer, uh, for your, um, visit. It’s, it’s cringy [sic] and it’s, uh, wet. It’s not humid at all. It rains a lot. Um, it’s a totally different smell; I don’t know how to describe it. Fresh air, I guess. Not mountains, but lotsa lakes, lotsa lakes. They say that there’s hundred thousands of lakes in Finland. A few big cities, but the population may be five million at this point. Um, my dad, uh, works in this, uh, shipyard, uh, called Vartsila. They, uh, build engines for these huge, uh, cruiser boats. So, and, uh, my mom works in a department store. Very I, I’d say ordinary life. You start taking English in school, um, I think it was third grade. And, uh, you take it pretty much year after year, you know get the more advanced level. And, uh, you add a second language, maybe a third, but, uh, I think English was always the strongest for me. And the teacher, teachers are pretty, pretty good; they expect a lot. But still you really won’t learn the language up until the point that you actually start using it. So, you can know a lotta grammar but don’t know how to speak.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Laura Sternberg

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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