India 15

Listen to India 15, a 69-year-old man from southern India. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 69

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/10/1948

PLACE OF BIRTH: Elappulli, Palghat District, Kerala

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Indian

OCCUPATION: freelance technical writer

EDUCATION: graduate

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

The subject has spent his entire life in India, mostly in southern India. But he’s also spent time in Mumbai. He says Bengaluru (or Bangalore) has had the most influence on his dialect.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He lists English movies and BBC radio and TV as influences. In his unscripted speech, he lists the Indian languages that he speaks (Kannada, Tamil, Malayalam, and Hindi) but says he considers English his native language, not a foreign language.

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

RECORDED BY: Subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 04/11/2017

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’ve been living most of my life in India, in particular south India. I have traveled around a lot on work within India but never outside India, and, uh, I have been speaking English both at work as well as at home most of the time. So I would consider myself, um, someone who uses English, uh, not as a foreign language but as a, uh, native language, you can say, among other languages that are local to the area that I live in. Currently I live in Karnataka, so I speak Kannada, though I can’t read or write Kannada. I can speak Tamil and write Tamil and read Tamil because I did my schooling in Tamil Nadu. Mmm, my mother tongue is Malayalam, but, uh, since my father and mother were in Tamil Nadu, I grew up there. Mm, I have a working knowledge of Malayalam and of the local language Kannada and of Hindi because I’ve lived in Bombay for quite some time; then I am back here in Karnataka. But I would consider myself a native speaker of South Indian English because I use English quite a lot.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Subject

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION: 04/11/2017

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

For a greater insight into the Tamil language and Indian culture, the subject suggests the following free audiobook: https://archive.org/details/tiruvalluva_1807_librivox. It’s a reading, by the subject, of The “Sacred” Kurral of Tiruvalluva-Nayanar by Thiruvalluvar.

COMMENTARY BY: Cameron Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/07/2018

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.