Trinidad 4

Listen to Trinidad 4, a 70-year-old woman from Trinidad. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 70

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/07/1939

PLACE OF BIRTH: Trinidad

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Asian (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: teacher

EDUCATION: master of arts

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

The subject has visited England, France, Germany, Russia, and Singapore.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject was married to a Pakistani.

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

RECORDED BY: Hiranya Keenawinna (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/10/2009

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Well, I’ve visited England, France, Germany, Russia. Russia, I found the people to be the nicest. The country was nice in the sense; it was, you know, it needed rebuilding and so on but the people were extremely nice. I also visited Singapore. The country was clean and nice. And there was a night zoo that was unusual. The animals only came out at night and you only went to it at night. So that was interesting. The food in Russia was terrible. The food in Singapore was good. (Laughter) China was interesting. The people in China were reserved, very formal, you know. But it was good to visit it because China is emerging. Trinidad is in the Caribbean. It’s an island seven miles off the coast of Venezuela. At one time we claimed to have the most cosmopolitan population in the world. Which means that people from all different countries at different times in the history, you know. First we had, of course, the … similar to the American Indians, we had the Carib (spelling?) Indians in the Caribbean. They were the same type of people as the Native American Indians here. And of course we had … er … slaves … and then when the slaves…when slavery was abolished during the British, the British controlled Trinidad. They brought people from India as indentured laborers and they also brought Chinese. So we have er … and then with Europeans, you know, during the time that Europeans were persecuted they all came to the Caribbean and of course we have English, England colonizing the country, France trying to colonize. Spain at one time, Trinidad was discovered by Columbus in the name of Spain. So we have er … just er … Spanish influence and Spanish is spoken a lot in the country. Uh, when I was going to school which is a long long time, we had to take five years of Spanish and French. We were a family of six, four boys and two girls and we never dreamed that we’d all be spread all over the world. We’d um … I am married to a Pakistani. My sister is married to somebody from New Zealand. My brother is married to a Chinese girl. Two of my other brothers are married to girls from Jamaica and one brother is married to a girl from Barbados.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Hiranya Keenawinna (under supervision of David Nevell)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/10/2009

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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