Fiji Five - Text
The subject is an Indian female. She was born on the 28th of September, 1966, and is currently working as the owner of a homestay. She has a tertiary level education.
She was born and raised on Lautoka, Fiji, where she lived until age 19. She then moved to Auckland, New Zealand for six years before moving back to Fiji (Suva). Running time: 00:04:10.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
Ok…um… I’ll—I’ll tell you one thing that deals…relates…to how I speak and everything. My family, uh, a lot of members of my family, uh, migrated to America. And my grandfather worked for United Airlines, so, um, the family had an opportunity to come back all the time. And…we lived in Fiji, and, um, we had all our cousins come to visit us. And…by the time they left they all had American accents. It was funny. It was really, really funny. But we learned… Because _____________. It wasn’t actually rural, but we lived in a country….town, and everything. And, um, my parents were not that educated. I mean their English was just pretty standard. They could communicate. So that was our learning. And… Can you imagine, to American English? Yeah, oh… They were from California. And I just remember the things that they… people would say. “Where are you from?” I said “Oh, I used to blame you and _____________ for ___________...” Because they would come…they’d come… I mean home on the holidays for three months at a time. So they’d come and spend their entire time here. And by the time they left…I mean we were trying to emulate them. Believe me. It was… And, um, uh, yeah. So… then I went to a Methodist school. Which was a very big cross section. And, um, of, um, Fijians, Indians, and all the mixed races. And it’s considered one of the top schools for all girls. And, um, then when I went to New Zealand—and that’s when you find that “Can you say that again?” You know, our pronunciation is very… Um, some schools do. In some schools in Suva area you find that their English is so…like the Queen’s English. But we…we’re, um… I had trouble when I was growing up, you know, to have access to that. We just had…we only learned what we were taught at school.