Madagascar 1

Listen to Madagascar 1, a man from Madagascar. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

Both as a courtesy and to comply with copyright law, please remember to credit IDEA for direct or indirect use of samples.  IDEA is a free resource;  please consider supporting us.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: N/A

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Madagascar

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Malagasy (exact race/ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: graduate student, specializing in biodiversity of Madagascar

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

He spent time in New York City and Massachusetts in the United States, and he speaks of his experiences there in the unscripted speech.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject knows Malagasy and also French. He studied English in school and has been exposed extensively to it during his time in the United States.

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): 02/2004

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’m originally from Madagascar. I was born in a small city which is called, uh, close to the city Antsirabe. I took English class at the secondary school in Madagascar. We had English class just, uh, starting the — two hour, two hours per week. And that during two years. And when I got to the high school, I still had some English, uh, classes but, uh, just once, once a week. After I got my bachelor degree, I went to the University of Antananarive, which is the capital of Madagascar. And, uh, after university, uh, I didn’t, I didn’t have any more English classes. So my English training was a little bit, uh, stopped there, for the moment, that moment. Until I got my graduate degree from the university, which is called DEA, which, uh, stands [for] Diplôme d’études Approfondies. After that, I started to, to do my field research with some English-speaking people. Uh, and so I was, uh, involved, uh, within the, uh, conservation, uh, organization, uh, in my, uh, in my country, the WWF. And I followed the, uh, English training at the American center over there for three months. And I, uh, applied for fellowship to come to the State[s] and to study up on birds. So I got a fellowship from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. And I did my master degree there [in] biodiversity of bird of Madagascar. After I got my master, I, I decided to continue my study. One professor here at UMass just ask, asked me at that time if I wanted to, to come to Massachusett[s]. So I said, “Yes, I will like to.” So I applied for to come to the University of Massachusett[s], and I was accepted. And so since then, I, I have been working on my, my Ph.D.

Uh, Madagascar is a big country and there about — at there, eighteen ethnic groups. And, uh, all the ethnic groups have different, I mean slightly, uh, some dialect. But, uh, we in Madagascar, we can — it’s not like Africa. In the mainland Africa, some country cannot understand the other country. But in Madagascar, we understand. We can communicate with each other, uh, no matter where, where we are from or what dialect we are using. So there is some, some connection between, some, uh, among the Malagasy people. Uh, that time, that was the colonization period and, uh, during that time, the French [unclear] dominated the whole, the whole country. And the main language used during that time was French. And even, even today, I mean, we use more Malagasy at different, uh, administration offices, uh, today. But before, we only use French as a the principal language. I speak Malagasy. We always say Malagasy as the language from Madagascar. We don’t really distinguish the dialect of Madagascar. And, um, Malagasy’s the, lang-, the lang-, lang-, language that we all use. We consider our dialects like one because we, we can, uh, understand each other with that. And I speak also French and, uh, English.

[The subject speaks the rest of his unscripted speech in Malagasy and French.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Wright

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/08/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Observe the lack of aspiration on initial voiceless obstruents; the occasional use of the alveolar nasal for the velar; the even stress pattern, and the use of pure vowels in all syllables of some polysyllabic words; his command of the English semi-vowel “r”; and his tonal placement, which is reminiscent of other Eastern African speakers.

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

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,