Venezuela 1

Listen to Venezuela 1, a 39-year-old woman from Caracas, Venezuela. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 39

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1963

PLACE OF BIRTH: Caracas, Venezuela

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Venezuelan (exact ethnicity unknown)

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree, graduate school study

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

At the time of the interview, the subject had lived in the United States for 10 years.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She studied basic English in high school and had knowledge of grammar and structure, but not fluency of speech.  She had an interest in popular music in English.  When she moved to the United States to attend graduate school, she had not studied English for 10 years and could not converse fluently.

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

RECORDED BY: Bob Dorsey (under the supervision of Paul Meier)

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

I was born in a very beautiful, small, rich, oil country, small in terms of people; there’s only twenty-five million people now and, uh, rich because it has oil – named Venezuela. And, uh, when I little there were not that many people and it was a very organized, clean and, uh, gorgeous country. It’s still gorgeous, but it has been through a lot of trouble in the past ten years. Um, we have the highest cable car in the world. We have the tallest waterfalls in the world. Beautiful beaches, lots of riches, and hopefully that beautiful country will go back to the way it used to be very soon. I hope that you will go there sometime.  I was taught little words when I was a girl in kindergarten, like “pollito – chicken; gallina – hen; lapiz – pencil; la pluma – pen.” OK? So, but I mean instructor when there, we had to take English in high school. And I always loved it because I loved the songs in the radio. I was a big radio fan. And I loved it, and I wanted to learn what the words of the song said. So I always liked the sound of English. And I always did very well in English in high school. It was very basic: just the grammar rules and stuff nothing, you don’t have to really talk. But I was always eager, you know, to show off that I had a good accent. And I remember, I mean, there, I was considered to have a good accent; but probably not here. My teacher in my last year in high school – we take that for five years – she said, “Oh, well, congratulations, you have a great accent.” And I was so proud.  Um, later, there in university, we don’t have to take languages; so there was a void of ten years. And then I started preparing to come here to graduate school – and I started taking grammar classes to take the test of English as foreign language. But we don’t have to speak. So it was just grammar. When I got here, I thought I spoke English. And then I couldn’t talk for three months.  [Our Father Rosary Prayer]: Padre nuestro, que estás en el cielo. Santificado sea tu nombre. Venga tu reino. Hágase tu voluntad en la tierra como en el cielo. Danos hoy nuestro pan de cada día. Perdona nuestras ofensas, como también nosotros perdonamos a los que nos ofenden. No nos dejes caer en tentación y líbranos del mal.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Bob Dorsey (under the supervision of Paul Meier)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/05/2002

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject has a mild accent. You may note the lack of aspirated “t” and “p” in her speech. She also has a tendency to lengthen the short “i” in words such as “kick” and “six.” You may also note her lengthened vowels in words like “world” and “be.” She also tends to stress unusual syllables of a word or phrase. For instance in the word “lunatic,” she emphasizes the second syllable rather than the first. Also, with the two words “was sentimental,” these two words are compressed together as “wasentimental,” with the emphasis on the first syllable, “was.”

COMMENTARY BY: Bob Dorsey (under the supervision of Paul Meier)

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 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.