Finland 4

Listen to Finland 4, a 54-year-old woman from Kotka, Finland. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 54

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1950

PLACE OF BIRTH: Kotka, Finland

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Swedish and Finnish descent

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: The subject was a student at the time of this interview.

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

The subject lived in Helsinki, Finland, and in England for three years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She grew up speaking Swedish. She is married to an Englishman and speaks fluently with a mixed accent in English. Her accent is not typical of Finnish accents.

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): 27/01/2004

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 was born in a little town called Kotka. It’s near the Russian Border and it’s, um, it’s a town, it’s a harbor town; it’s, uh, one of Finland’s biggest most important harbor towns. And my mother was Finnish, my father was Swedish, and I spent most of my up-bringing, well maybe ’bout two years in that town; then we moved near Helsinki, and I started school in a Swedish school. I was 8 years old and, um, we were, we stayed near Helsinki for about five years; then we moved again a bit north of Helsinki, and there I did most of my schooling in a Swedish school. I had one brother. At the school I met Laurie and, um, came over to England. We stayed here about three years. Then, um, we went back to Finland, had our children and now the children are grown up. And now I’m free to study myself for a change again and the English language and, well, maybe my English language has been modified greatly because I have Swedish and Finnish and I’ve had 30 years of practice, so maybe I’ve lost a lot of it, the accent that normally you would have. I’ve actually deliberately tried to lose it. I don’t know how I managed if it’s gone or not, but, um, I think that I haven’t got a very clear Finnish accent any more or a very clear Swedish one. Well If I said first, “Well here’s a story for you” I would say in Finnish, [speaks in Finnish], and if I say it in Swedish it will be like um, [speaks in Swedish], which isn’t a clear translation but that’s how I would say it. “Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse” would be in Finnish [speaks in Finnish] nurse? veterinary nurse? I don’t know what I would … nurse? And in Swedish it would be [speaks in Swedish] in Finnish.

TRANSCRIBED BY: William Paulson

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2005

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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