Lithuania 1

Listen to Lithuania 1, a 49-year-old woman from Vilnius, Lithuania, who has also lived in the United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 49

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/02/1967

PLACE OF BIRTH: Vilnius, Lithuania

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Russian

OCCUPATION: ESL (English as a Second Language) professor

EDUCATION: M.S. in Linguistics

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

The subject was raised in Vilnius, Lithuania, when it was part of the Soviet Union, but she has spent a large part of her adult life in the United States (Southern California).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

In Vilnius, there is a strong Lithuanian and Polish influence on the Russian dialect.

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

RECORDED BY: Karina Pennet (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/02/2016

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

OK, so, uh, I was born in 1967 in Vilnius, Lithania, and Lithuania was a former Soviet Republic. Um, I had a pretty good family: um, mom and dad, and also I was lucky having my grandparents. And why I’m say I’m lucky, because, um, after the World War 2, a lot of us did not have grandparents. Um, they vanished, disappeared, were dead. Um, so I was very lucky. Um, my dad was a sai-, uh, sailor, and my mom was a bookkeeper. Um, but my dad was out of the house most of the time. So he was six months, um, away from the house, and for two months he was back home. Um, and when I tried to count how long I stayed with my dad, so I think it was maybe five years at, at most, so that was very little, but, uh, he left a great impact on my life.

Uh, and I have a sister; she is four years younger than I am, and that makes, that makes a very big difference, um, because I grew up in the year late ’60s and she grew up in the beginning of ’70s. That was a very, very different era, completely different era. And in 1991, when Soviet Union collapsed, that was, um, for most of us that was a disaster, um, because we had a lot of great benefits; we never thought about them, but when we lost these benefits, we, uh, actually could compare. Uh, we had free housing; uh, when I say free housing, that was truly free, so that means we had, uh, apartments with our names on the title. And, um, uh, basically, younger generation, unfortunately, uh, stayed with the parents for, um, many years, because it usually took maybe from one year to ten years to get these apartments from the government. But again if they got them, it was free. Um, also we did not have to pay a lot of utilities. The only thing we had to pay for: electricity.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Karina Pennet (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 09/02/2016

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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• 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.