Japan 3

Listen to Japan 3, a 25-year-old man from Nagoya, Japan. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 25

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1974

PLACE OF BIRTH: Nagoya, Japan

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Japanese

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: The subject had just begun college at the time of this interview.

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

The subject had moved to the United States a few months prior to this recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

He didn’t start studying English until middle school. That fact, along with the subject’s brief time outside Japan, helps explain why his English is poor.

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): 1999

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

If I go to Japan, it’s easy to get a job. Actually, I want to get a job like, consulting company for developing countries, like looking at like environmental aspect. So far, I came here to … haa … English. Japan, the city name is, uh … Nagoya. Nagoya is, uh, middle point in Japan … middle point. City … is … uh … Nagoya is nothing special except like Toyota, you know Toyota right? Toyota … car company? Eh. Toyota base is there … there are many people and crowded. Uh, my, my family live in like, small house … yep. Japan is very small city, but, too many people are living there so … too crowded … so … land … land … land is, very expensive too. Japanese education system is … emphasis on only writing and reading … especially reading … so, I think there are many translators [laughs], but we don’t have … Japanese … they’re not good at talking … uh, speaking Engli–English.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Faith Harvey

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 25/02/2008

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.