Japan 1

Listen to Japan 1, a man in his 60s from Tokyo, Japan, who has also spent many years in the United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 60s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1930s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Tokyo

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Japanese

OCCUPATION: professor of theatre

EDUCATION: Ph.D. at an American university

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

Subject had been living in the United States for about 40 years at the time of this interview. He also lived a year in Canada.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject learned English at the age of 13. Despite going to college and living in the United States for 40 years, the subject still retains many Japanese sounds, including the r/l substitution.

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): 1999

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 Tokyo, Japan and uh, uh, started studying English when I was uh, at the uh first year of middle school, so, when I was 13n years old. And, uh, that was during the wartime, so uh, emphasis on English learning wasn’t, uh, too much. And, but, uh, after we uh, finished the war, and I was in, uh, third year, uh, the uh..studying English became more serious, and I had, uh the fortune of studying extra after school hours with uh, uh somebody who had studied in uh, USA, uh, in his youth, so, um, I picked up uh, uh a good uh practice in particularly speaking and hearing. And, uh, I majored in English, at uh college, and taught four years of English at junior high school, uh, before I left Japan at the age of 27, and I spent a year in Canada before I came to USA, and I finished my master’s degree as well as Ph.D, and uh, taught uh, thirty-four years in, uh universities at, uh, in the USA, and uh, here at the University of Kansas. I taught thirty years in theater and film, uh especially specializing in Asian theater with an emphasis on Japanese traditional theater.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/02/2008

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).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.