Iraq 1

Listen to Iraq 1, a man in his 50s from Karbala, Iraq. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50s

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Karbala, Iraq

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Shia

OCCUPATION: The subject has been an English-language teacher.

EDUCATION: The subject has an undergraduate degree, a master’s and a Ph.D.

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

The subject has lived in the United States. He has lived in Illinois and Kansas and, at the time of the interview, was living in Florida.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject studied English in elementary school, high school and college. He also studied English literature in college, in Iraq.

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): N/A

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 Iraq in a city called Karbala. Is a religious center for the Shia in Iraq. The majority of the Iraqi people are Shia people, and Karbala is a center for that. It’s a religious city, and I grew up in there. And then I finished my, uh, education, including high school, in Karbala and then went to Baghdad for my undergraduate education in English. And then I worked in Baghdad in, uh, as a teacher and also as a director of as the office of the minister of higher education. And then I, uh … I got a scholarship, I came to the United States to study. Well, in Iraq they they teach English, uh, I think beginning from level four or five in the primary school or elementary school. English as a subject, as — but I studied English, uh, when I went to the University of Al Mustansiriya at the English Department. I studied the English literature, but uh, mainstream courses and and the novel, the drama, uh, mostly of Britain. Grammar of the English language and linguistics and so on.  And then I taught English after that. I taught, uh, at the military college for two years in Iraq before coming here. And also I was a lecturer of the English language at a high school for girls. I spend about one year and a half, uh, in Illinois. I went to Eastern Illinois University and did the master’s degree in English and also did some courses, undergraduate courses, in theatre: acting, directing, and so on. I didn’t have that background, so I had to make it up. And then I moved to Lawrence, uh, Kansas, to for the Ph.D and another M.A. in theatre, and when I finished that, I went to Florida. [laughs] This is where I live now.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Elizabeth Terrel and Amy Stoller

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 21/05/2008

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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