Taiwan 1

Listen to Taiwan 1, a woman in her 30s from Yilan, Taiwan. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30s

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

PLACE OF BIRTH: Yilan, Taiwan

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Taiwanese (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: graduate student

EDUCATION: Subject was a graduate student at the time of this interview.

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

She was living in Kansas, in the United States, when this recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject’s first language is Mandarin Chinese. In both the reading and the unscripted conversation, you will hear that this subject has made considerable progress toward acquiring American English, as she had been studying for the graduate test in spoken English for some time when this recording was made.

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): 15/05/2002

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Taiwan, it’s, uhh, geographically, it’s quite diverse in terms, we have, uhh, essential part of Taiwan, its really high mountains and, and, then we are surrounded by ocean, Pacific Ocean. So it’s island with mountains and ya know oceans. So, uhh, you can get a lot of fresh seafood in Taiwan and because we kinda located in tropical area so the weather, it’s pretty much year long, you know, pretty warm, so you can get a lot of tropical fruit bananas, mango, papaya, just all sorts of, uhh, fruit and vegetables, too. We have a so-called official language. It’s Mandarin Chinese, Chinese Mandarin which is also official language of China. So, we can communicate with China, Chinese people. We also have our own, so-called, our own languages. We have Holonese, which is from Southern part of China ’cause more than 97 percent of people, population of Taiwan are from China like back to 400 years ago to almost like 60 years ago and so we have like Holonese, and then we have Hakkanese that’s also from Southern part of China. So Holonese and Hakkanese. And then we have almost two percent (indistinguishable) so called indigenous population and they have nine or ten different tribes and they all speak different languages.
[* = vocal pause]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Brandon Ford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

You will hear that she is fairly accurate with /l/ and /r/, slipping occasionally in words like “implied,” “normally,” and “yellow.” Her voiceless /th/ is quite successful in “thought” and “north,” but the voiced /th/ less so in phrases like “the Duke Street.” Her acquisition of rhoticity in vowels with post-vocalic /r/ is well advanced, e.g., “north,” “mirror,” “bird” and “hurry.”

COMMENTARY BY: Paul Meier

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/05/2002

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.