India Eleven - Text

The speaker is a 25 year-old, Female, Asian Indian. She is a psychologist working on her second masters in clinical psychology. She lived in India 23 years before moving to California. She was born in the city of Jamnagar in Gujarat, India. Growing up she lived in Mumbai and Baroda India for more than a year each. She speaks Gujarati, Hindi, Tamil and English. She learned English before kindergarten because her parents were English speaking.
This Interview was conducted and edited by Hannah Parsons. The interview took place on October 19th 2008 and runs 04:16. The speaker talks about where she came from, what languages she speaks and what she is now doing at Cal State Fullerton. In this interview the speaker gives clear representations of several signature Indian sounds including her use of 1.) The emphasized yet not-aspirated p’s and t’s in “Perry” and “territory” 2.) Her replacement of w’s with v’s like in, “was a woman with a goose” represented as “vas a voman vith a goose” 3.) The retroflexed, tapped r, which can be heard in “Sarah Perry” and “hurry” and 4.) The linking r is also represented in “a year or two”.

Orthographic Transcription

Uh I was born in Jamnagar, which is a city in the western state of Gujarat in India. And… the language spoken in Gujarat is Gujarati but my parents hail from a Southern state in India named Tamil Nadu so the native language, language spoken there is Tamil hence my mother tongue is Tamil so as a result I learned Tamil and Gujarati. And since India uh… the… national language of India is Hindi we learned that in school so that’s how I know Hindi and since I was educated till the 10th grade in a convent school and later on went on to study in various English medium schools and colleges I learned English as well. And… the earliest that I remember, I think I learned English before I started schooling or kindergarten because both my parents were English-speaking but that need not necessarily be the norm for everybody from India. And… right now I’m here in Cal State Fullerton doing my second masters in clinical psychology, um… and I’m liking it a lot. I did my first masters in India and I was working there for a year or two in the schools and then I realized I needed some more training, so here I am.