Guangdong 5

Listen to Guangdong 5, a 22-year-old woman from Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 22

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/05/1998

PLACE OF BIRTH: Shenzhen, Guangdong

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Chinese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: postgraduate

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has been exposed to American TV series since she was 10 years old. During her undergraduate years, she wanted to add a sense of British style to what had previously been more of an American accent, so she watched many British TV series. She says that her accent gradually became more British-sounding.

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

RECORDED BY: subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/02/2021

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So I was actually, uh, so I was born in Shenzhen, a coastal city in the southern China. And I’ve lived there all my life. I didn’t, um, go abroad; I didn’t travel to an English-speaking country until the, until the sophomore year where I went to Cambridge, um, for 15 days and then go to Germany with my friend, like travel in Europe for like a month.

Um, so I am actually very proud of this city, uh, uh, the city where I grew up: Shenzhen, because 30 years ago, it was just a small fishing village. Nothing, nothing really to see there. But during these 30 years, many things have changed, and it has gradually became [sic] a, a cosmo, international cosmopolitan, where many excellent enterprises are born, such as Huawei and Tencent. And I do believe that many students in Shenzhen can speak like me or at least, um, excel at an English test. Because, I mean, many, um, Shenzhen really paid many attention — emphasize a lot on the education in English.

TRANSCRIBED BY: subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/02/2021

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.