Romania 5

Listen to Romania 5, a woman in her 40s from Bucharest, Romania, who has also spent time in the United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 40s

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Bucharest, Romania

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Romanian/white

OCCUPATION: professor, scenic costume designer

EDUCATION: N/A

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

The subject spent five months in Greece and had been living in the eastern United States for 20 years at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was born and educated in Bucharest, Romania. Her second language learned was Russian, starting around the third grade, when Romania was part of the old Communist Block. She learned English and French in high school and, in her youth, was fluent in Russian and French.

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

RECORDED BY: N/A

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

[Recording 5b]: Well, it’s a story which I like to tell people. When we came to this country 20 years ago, my son was eleven months, and, uh, we came from Europe, actually, uh, from Romania; we went to Greece. We spent five months in Greece, and we came to United States, so actually we flew to New York, and, uh, my son was eleven months, which I told you, and, uh, when we got to New York he was very tired and we had to wait in airport another five or six hours to get the flight Washington because you know the family was waiting in Washington for us and the child was so tired and was crying and was so upset because I said, oh my god, what these people around must think of us; you know, we are just so new to this country, and, uh, you know people we don’t want people to think at look at these immigrants they just have such a, a naughty child, or who knows anyway; so, uh, I try my best; I feed the child; he was tired he didn’t stop crying. So after five or six month, uh five or six hours we took the flight to Washington, and it’s like a two-hours flight? Three and a half? I don’t even know exactly because I never fly from New York to Washington or Washington to New York because always we drive to New York, so I don’t know really how long takes, but probably around two hours; and Stephan is his name; uh; well was crying and crying and crying and was a small plane and we were so upset I was so upset; you know I didn’t know what to do but people around so nice so good, they said don’t care don’t mind, it’s fine, we understand, do you need something, can we help with something? So I have to tell you in that moment I fell in love with American people. So that was something which only would bring tears in my eyes because, you know, when somebody so good to your child, you’ll never forget.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Samara Naeymi

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/15/05

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject states that nowadays Romanian students are much more fluent in English and have less distinctive accents than hers because they begin studying the language in primary school. She also says that Romanians are usually taught British English. Her own teacher of English was British and married a Romanian woman. Some key features of her accent include lightly tapped or flapped [r], [k] for [g], [i] for [I], and [s] for [th]. The “-ing” suffix tends to shift to “-ink” with little or no explosion on the final [k]. Spelled “a” tends to get “low back A.” Spelled “o” is pronounced [o], whereas American English speakers tend to use “low back A.” Many final consonants are stopped but not exploded. Subject also exhibits altered stress. In addition, notice the British English use of “bath” as a verb, where the American word choice would be “bathe.”

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).

 

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