Guatemala 2

Listen to Guatemala 2, a man from Santa Cruz el Chol, Baja Verapaz, Guatemala. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: N/A

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Santa Cruz el Chol, in the Baja Verapaz region of Guatemala

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Hispanic (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: university education

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

The subject moved to the United States after his university education in Guatemala.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject learned most of his English from a friend in south Georgia, in the United States. He attended a university, where he was formally educated in English. He learned his first letters when his mother traced their shapes in the soap foam as she washed clothes in the river. The inhabitants of the area in which the subject grew up can be roughly divided into two main groups: the Mayan Indians, who have preserved their ancient culture and language, and the Ladinos or Mestizos, who have a mixed heritage, the subject belonging to this latter group.

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

RECORDED BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/07/2001

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 Guatemala in a very small town about sixty miles north of Guatemala City. It’s a very beautiful area that has a lot of mountains and, uh, most of the people living there are, are relatives. It’s one of those towns where you call. everybody knows everybody. My family have lived there for many many years, I.. have my grandmother living there when I was born and, eh.. my father grew up in a different area, but, eh, came to my to my town and that’s where my parents met. I grew up there, my mamma was a school teacher and I guess that was eh, a great influence to me to try to learn more and more she always want us to go to school and do good in school. I lived there for about fifteen years and then moved to a larger city to go to highschool and study a little bit more. Later on, I had to move to eh, the coast, where I went to the university and studied three more years there. I t was there where I guess I started speaking, eh, a little bit of English. I met some friends that were from the States and I basically heard them more than eh speak. I came later to Mexico and had some classes to, eh, prepare for the TOEFFL, the test of English to come to the United States schools. I moved to the states about twelve years ago. I have been, eh, in a couple of states, basically. I learned most of my English in Georgia, in South Georgia. Probably the main teacher that I had was a friend that I worked with for about four years, and, eh, he was not really, you know, a person that went to the university he was an uh. an ex military person and later he became a, a priest so I kind of learned, eh, nice English I think, I did, eh, I didn’t really learn to curse because he didn’t do it an’ em.after that I came to the University where I am now and got eh, to, was exposed to more eh professional English I guess eh better eh better education and dats what I got , what I, what I can speak now. We grew up close to nature I will say.We used to just play in the river and in the woods eh.. we used to play Tarzan a lot..eh.. and eh.. we didn’t have TV I remember when they brought the first tv to town. We used to watch the fights of Mohammed Ali, and it was just one TV in town; it was a black and white.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/07/2001

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject’s vocal patterns are somewhat halting initially, as though choosing the correct words, and fairly linear in range. Some of the features of the subject’s speech include the substitution of the long {e} vowel for the short {i} vowel, so you hear “keet” for kit, a general substitution of {s} for {z} and {sh} for {zh}, and the elimination of the voiced and unvoiced {th}, as in “taut” for thought. You hear a fairly consistent use of the intermediate {a}, a tapped{r} in the medial position, a trilled {r} in the initial position, an open-throated prolonged aspirate on words that begin with {h} and the addition of the neutral “eh” before words that begin with{s}, so you hear “eh-speak,” etc. Another common feature of this accent is the substitution of {b} for {v} as in “berry” for very. It was interesting to me to discover that the speaker learned much of his conversational English from an African American in South Georgia.

COMMENTARY BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/07/2001

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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