Russia Six - Text
This subject is an educated woman, born 1946 in Odessa. She and her family moved to Riga, Latvia when she was quite young. She was bi-lingual in Latvian and Russian from an early age, and had a smattering of Yiddish. In her late twenties she emigrated to the USA, first to Cincinatti and later to Kansas City. She has a university education and works as a medical technologist. While her English is fluent there is still a strong accent to be detected after more than twenty years of residence in the US. Note the velarized 'l'; the plosive 'th'; the devoicing of final voiced consonants. She is married to Russia7. Running time: 00:05:03. Recorded and edited by Paul Meier, March 2002.
TRANSCRIPTION
I was born in May 8th 1946 in Ukraine, city of Chernivets’ka. And (um) when I was a year old my parents moved to Riga, Latvia, where I spent another twenty-eight years and (um) I went to, I got my bachelor degree in science, it was med, like pre-med. And I came to United States when I was almost, no I was 29 years old, I came with a five years old son. And (um) I used to live in Cincinnati Ohio and then I have met my husband and we got married and I moved to Kansas City and I had another son. I spoke Latvian it was a necessity, not by my choice but I think it was ok, it wasn’t really fluent but it was good for, for my job and (um) I could communicate with people. Not as good as my Russian was. And (um) I also understood a little bit of Yiddish, it was necessary because I had to know what my parents were talking about. And (um) I think that’s all languages and I took English of course when I was in school (um) but it wasn’t very much, it really helped me a lot when I came because at least I know like few hundred words to begin with, you know. I didn’t know how to put them together but…
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY KARINA LEMMER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR SOUTH AFRICA, April 25, 2008