Other Chinese Provinces 1

Listen to Other Chinese Provinces 1, a 26-year-old woman from an unknown location in China, who has also lived in the United States. 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: 26

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1981

PLACE OF BIRTH: unknown province in China

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Chinese (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: worker on Wall Street, in New York, in the United States

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

Subject came to the United States at the age of 21 for graduate school and has been living there since then. She first stayed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, for grad school, and then moved to Greenwich, Connecticut, for her first job, and now works in New York City.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She began studying English at the age of 11. During junior high and high school, she learned English in the British way, since that’s how it was taught in China. Then she began to learn American English after she went to college, mainly because she was taking TOEFL and GRE at that time. Then after she came to the States, she began to pick up more American accents, though what she really wanted was to speak perfect RP.

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

RECORDED BY: Subject

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 20/02/2007

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 China, and (ah) Chinese is my native language. I studied English as a class in junior high and high school where it was taught in the British way. Then, afterwards, I went to college. I began to make a transition to speak American English because I wanted to go to the States for graduate school. (ahm) Afterwards, at age of 21, I realised my dream and came to the States to study. I got my master’s degree from Harvard and have been working on Wall Street after graduation. My experience in speaking steady English gives me an accent which mixes Chinese American and the British ways of speaking.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bill McCann

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 23/10/2011

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.