Turkmenistan 1

Listen to Turkmenistan 1, a 21-year-old woman from Ashgabat, Turkmenistan. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 21

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/05/1981

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: N/A

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: Subject was studying the piano at university at the time of this interview.

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

Her family lived in Moscow for a year. She was living in in Kansas, in the United States, at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Subject has been in school since the age of 5 and began attending a music school when she was in third grade. She is fluent in English, Turkmen, and Russian. A good deal of her speech has a strong Russian influence. Her parents are well educated, her mom being a doctor and her dad a composer.

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

RECORDED BY: Julia Hardin

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/12/2002

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in, um, capital of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat, um, in 1981, um, May 14th.  Actually my birthday is two days because I was born right between 13th and 14th.  I was born right on midnight, so.  I guess that’s, uh, mmm, just, uh, I don’t know.  It’s good for me because I can, uh, celebrate my birthday two days and get more presents.  So, um.  Yes, my mom is, um, doctor, she’s a gynecologist.  And my dad is a-a composer.  Um, he writes music for uh-uh symphony orchestras and, uh, I’m trying to make him write something for me, uh, since I’m playing piano.  So he’s started working on a piano concerto right now for me.  The official language and native language is Turkmen in Turkmenistan.  And, uh, Turkmen is in group of Turkic languages.  It’s not Farsi or Arabi-Arabic language as some people think, mmm, since it’s in Asia.  It’s, uh, in group of Turkic languages and it’s m- it’s more similar to Turkish, Azerbaijan, Uzbek languages.  And, uh, since Turkmenistan was part of U.S.S.R. for seventy-five years, uh, most people speak Russian also.  So, ummm, a lot of, ummm…I can say that everybody understands Russian in Turkmenistan.  Yeah, I started learning Russian when I was five when I went to kindergarten.  Um, and, ummm, I can’t say that most people understand English but a lot of people do understand English in Turkmenistan since it’s a kinda, mmm, required language at school to take and so …

[Subject speaks in native language]: Salam! Meniñ adym Maýa. Men 21 (ýigrimi bir) ýasymda. Men Türkmenistandan geldim. Türkmenistan Orta Asiada ýerlesýär.

[Subject speaks the English translation]: Hello! My name is Maya. I am 21. I came from Turkmenistan. Turkmenistan is located in Central Asia.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lynn Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/03/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

A good deal of her speech has a strong Russian influence. For example, the dark “L”s are the most noticeable thing. She also uses very bright “a” sounds in words such as “Mom.” The ends of words, especially those ending in plosive consonants, are relaxed.

COMMENTARY BY: Julia Hardin

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

The archive provides:

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• 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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