Jiangsu 1

Listen to Jiangsu 1, an 18-year-old man from Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 18

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/02/1990

PLACE OF BIRTH: Nanjing, Jiangsu Province

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Chinese (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: At the time of the recording, the subject was in her first year at university.

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

Subject came to live in Brisbane, Australia, one year before the date of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She began to learn English in grade one of primary school, which was quite early, as most Chinese schools do not begin English lessons until grade three or four. Her secondary school was the Nanjing Foreign Language School, at which she learned English as a second language for almost six years. Her English studies exposed her to native speakers from many English-speaking countries, and these were a strong influence. She herself believes that this variety of teachers has left her without a clearly defined accent, but she does have something of a Chinese-Australian accent.

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

RECORDED BY: Zhang Gang Fu

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/07/2008

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 Nanjing, the, um, used to be capital in China. I just turned 18 a couple of month ago. So I’m currently studying as an oversea student at the University of Queensland, um situated in the city of Brisbane, which is a very peaceful place. And, um, I am majoring in civil engineering, first year. So, yeah, actually this is my second year here in Australia, and before that I was doing a university preparation course held in a small, A-shaped office building in town called the, um, IES, which is short for International Education Services, I guess. I could still remember the time when I was there, you know, life was just so bleak. At first I thought “OK, so now I’m in Australia and so at least there will be some Aussies out there?” But I was totally wrong by saying that. Um, I mean, apart from the extremely lousy design of the building, which looks barely like a school; it looks like a typical Asian college. I just felt so desperate about that, you know. Um, one of my early dreams had always been just to come here and to learn the authentic English, not like the kind of English, or Chinglish you may call it, which is taught in China. When I finally made it through to uni- I just felt more than happy for myself. Now everything is going great and I have a bunch of friends who I am used to hang out with. It’s always a good, it’s always a glad thing when you finally come to a point that you feel good about yourself and start looking back at what you have achieved

TRANSCRIBED BY: Zhang Gang Fu

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/07/2008

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.