Argentina Four - Text
My full name's [NAME OMITTED]. I was born in Quilmes, a city in Greater Buenos Aires. My grandparents on my father's side were Spanish, from Galicia, whereas my great-grandparents on my mother's side were Italian, from Liguria and Calabria. I'm a 48-year-old Caucasian woman. I'm a teacher of English and an undergraduate student in English Philology. I have a Bachelor's degree in Education - majoring in Elementary education. I can speak Spanish, English, Italian, Portuguese and French.
I started learning English at the age of 11, in 1969. I had a non-native teacher in a private language school whose courses were based on the Grammar-Translation Method. I remember studying long lists of vocabulary, doing translations from English into Spanish, listening to repetition drills and having very few opportunities to use English in class. However, I did my best to improve my English; I devoted a lot of time to listening to English-speaking singers (Beatles, Bee Gees, Sinatra, Elton John) and going to the cinema to watch English-speaking films. At the same time, as I've always loved reading plays, I used to read them aloud in front of a mirror.
In the unscripted speech, I talk about the place I was born and raised, where I'm living now, when I started to learn English, my trips to the UK and the US, my interest in dialects and accents and finally I read the lines from a tango called "Mi ciudad y mi gente" by Eladia Blázquez. They talk about Buenos Aires and its streets, a place where she sees her life go by.
¡Buenos Aires!
Para el alma mía no habrá geografía
mejor que el paisaje.
. de tus calles,
donde día a día me gasto los miedos,
las suelas y el traje.
This recording was made in Vitoria-Gasteiz, on 27th August, 2006.
Running time: 04:10
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
Well, I’m Argentinian. I was born in Quilmas, a city in greater Buenos Aires, but I grew up an’ studied in another city called (uh) Wilde [two syllables], or Wilde. The odd thing about this name is that it doesn’t refer to the British (uh) writer Oscar Wilde, but it does refer to a well-known medical doctor called Jose Daniel Wilde. Okay (um), I’ve been living in Spain for six years now. I started studying English when I was 11 years ol’ an’ I’m still stud’ing it. (Um, eh) I was lucky to have a very good nominating teacher of English, who encouraged me a lot to go an’ study the language. Once I finished high school, I started to study English at the university. Unfortunately, I couldn’ finish my studies. Still, I went on stud’ing on my own. In 1994, I went to the U.K. to travel an’ study. Then in 1997 I went to the U.S. In the year 2000 I came to Spain, together wi’ my husband an’ son. (Uh) I’m really keen on social linguistics, m-- mainly on the different kinds of-- or varieties of Spanish, English and Portuguese. (Uh) Actually I-- I came across the site in search of recordings of English dialects. (Uh) People here in Spain love my variety of Spanish, actually, Argentinian Spanish. They say is sounds sweeter than their own Spanish. Well, the peculiar accent of the portenos, the habitants of Buenos Aires, is closer to the Neapolitan dialect, Italian dialect, due to the large influx of Italian immigrants to the port of Buenos Aires. (Um) This immigration also influenced our lufardo, the slang spoken in Buenos Aires and the Rio de la Plata. Now to finish, some beautiful lines from Otango(? unclear) called Miserar de mi Gente. [Recites in Spanish] “ Buenos Aires, para l’alma mia…”
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, July 24, 2008