Taiwan One - Text
The subject is a Mandarin-speaking female graduate student, born I-lan, Taiwan, studying at the University of Kansas, USA, at the time this recording was made 5.15.2002 by Paul Meier. In both the reading and the unscripted conversation you will hear that this subject has made considerable progress towards acquiring American English. She had been studying for the graduate test in spoken English for some time when this recording was made. You will hear that she is fairly accurate with /l/ and /r/, slipping occasionally in words like "implied", "normally", and "yellow". Her voiceless /th/ is quite successful in "thought" and "north", but the voiced /th/ less so in phrases like "the Duke Street...". Her acquisition of rhoticity in vowels with post-vocalic /r/ is well advanced, e.g. "north", "mirror", "bird", and "hurry". Running time 00:05:38
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
(* = vocal pause)
(Underline - intentional misspelling based on speaker pronunciation; correct spelling in parenthesis following word)
Well, here is the story for you: Sarah Perry was a vetinery (veterinary) nurse who had been working daily at * an ol' zoo in a deserted district of the territery (territory). She was very happy to start er (a) new job at a super private pratice (practice) in north square near the Duke Street Tower. The area was much nearer for her and much to her like. Even so, on her first `morning, she felt stressed. She ate a bowl of porridge, checked * herself in the merr'r (mirror) and wash her face in a hurry. Then she put on a plain yerrow (yellow) dress and a freece (fleece) jacket, pit up her.pit up her kit and headed for work. When she got there, there was a woman wid (with) a goose waiting for her. The woman gave Sarah an official letter fern (from) the vent (vet). The letter impried (implied) that the animal could be suffering from a rare form of foot-n-mouth disease, which was surprising, because normally you would only espect (expect) to see it in a dop (dog) or a coap.co.coat (goat). Sarah was sentimental, so this make her feel sorry for the beautiful bird.
Before long, the itch goose began to stir (strut) around the office like a lunatic, which made unsanitary mess. The goose owner, Mary Harrison, kept calling, "Comma, Comma," which Sarah thought was an odd cherce (choice) for a name. Comma was strong and huge, so it would take some force to trap her, but Sarah have a different idea. First she tried gently stroking the goose lower back with her palm, then singing a tune to her. Finally, she administer ther (ether). Her efforts were now (not) futile. In no time, the goose began to tire, so Sarah was ever (able) to hold onto Comma and give her a relaxing bath. Once Sarah had managéd to bath the goose, she wipe her off with a cloth and lay her on her right side. Then Sarah confirmed the vent (vet's) diag-a-no-a-sis (diagnosis). Almost immedialy (immediately), she remembered inffective (an effective) treatment that required her to measure out a lot of medicine. Sarah warned that this is course of treatment might be espensive (expensive)-either five or six times the cost of penicillian (penicillin). I can't imagine paying so much, but Miss.Mr. Harrison-a mirrionairy (millionaire) lawyer-thought it was a fair price for a cure.
Taiwan, it's uhh geographically, it's quite diverse in terms, we have uhh essential part of Taiwan, its really high mountains and.and.then we are surrounded by ocean, Pacific Ocean. So it's island with mountains and ya know oceans. So, uhh, you can get a lot of fresh seafood in Taiwan and because we kinda located in tropical area so the weather, it's pretty much year long.you know.pretty warm, so you can get a lot of tropical fruit bananas, mango, papaya.just all sorts of uhh fruit and vegetables, too. We have a so-called official language. It's Mandarin Chinese, Chinese Mandarin which is also official language of China. So, we can communicate with China, Chinese people. We also have our own, so called, our own languages. We have ?honones? which is from Southern part of China 'cause more than 97% of people, population of Taiwan are from China like back to 400 years ago to almost like 60 years ago and so we have like ?honones? and then we have ?haganes? that's also from Southern part of China. So ?honones? and ?haganes?. And then we have almost two percent (indistinguishable) so called indigenous population and they have nine or ten different tribes and they all speak different languages.
Transcribed by Brandon Ford, March 2005.