Kenya 1

Listen to Kenya 1, a 38-year-old man from Kenya. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 38

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/11/1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Kenya

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: African/black

OCCUPATION: graphic designer

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

Subject lived in Kenya for the first 24 years of his life, and then moved to California, in the United States, where he had been living for 14 years at the time of this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

His first language is Swahili/Sheng.

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

RECORDED BY: Deja Cannon (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/04/2017

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 have, um, three sisters. I have a big sister who’s my oldest sister. And then I have three sist- uh, two sisters that follow me, and my mom and my dad. We were raised up right. The one major thing that I can compare, compare Kenya to America is growing up we never used to, like, use words like, “Oh I love you,” or “I think this much about you,” ’cause my dad, who is passed away — there’s not one time when he said, “Oh I love you” or anything like that. But I could, I can, I could — right now I can feel it, and I, I know he did.

And I guess growing up in Kenya, you don’t — we don’t do all those things; like, we don’t get too emotional, or maybe we do, but we don’t say it. I know my sisters love me. I know my mom loves me. I know my dad loves me, but we never used to share, like — it was never verbal. Like you can’t, you can’t say it, and it — there was nothing wrong with that. But coming to America, where you have to like express what you feel, you have to tell someone, “Hey, I love you,” and you have to show them. It’s different, ’cause in Kenya, it was, you can just tell. If, if you’re with someone, you’ll be with someone for like five, ten years, and you know they love you, but you don’t have to say anything like, yeah.

So that’s how I grew up, and I have no complaints. I, I, I was raised up with three sisters; I never had a brother, and the whole time I was like, I guess it made me feel some type of way to women, ’cause, [laughs] cause my dad told me; he, he only told me one time, “You have to treat women right and care about them and show them that you care about them.” That’s, that’s why I’ve always treated women like that, and I’ve always been weak to the opposite sex, which is women.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Deja Cannon (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/04/2017

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:

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• 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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