Czech Republic Four - Text
Recorded by Paul Meier, and edited December 14, 2007. Running time: 00:04:43
This subject, a Caucasian woman, born Banska Bystica, Slovakia, in 1979, bi-lingual in Slovak and Czech, moved to the United States when she was seventeen. This accounts for her very mild accent. She also reads the Czech and German proper names for I Never Saw Another Butterfly, by Celeste Raspanti, which can be found at Play Names and Terms
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Czechoslovakia - ah -- in the Slovak part of Czechoslovakia, in Banska Bystrica, I where I spent seventeen years of my life, um, and then my family and I moved to United States, to Vermont, where I intended (sic) two years of high school and four years of university. In Czechoslovakia my mother tongue is Slovak, um, and that's what we speak at home, ah, but we were a very bi-lingual country and spoke Czech, um, and understood Czech, read Czech, which was on TV and in news and newspapers and books and so on. Um, and these were primarily the languages we could speak, um, also Russian was taught in schools during the communist system and then it kind of went down but, I did not really learn any western languages until I came to United States. So I'm going to say, um, "my name is Eva Hruska, um, I was born in Czechoslovakia, in the Slovak part, in Banska Bystica, and I'll say this both in Slovak and Czech." So first Slovak, which comes a little naturally to me, um. Volám sa Eva Hrušková. Bola som narodená v Československu, v terajšom Slovensku, v Banskej Bystrici. [My name is Eva Hruskova. I was born in Czechoslovakia, in today’s Slovakia, in Banska Bystrica.] Now I'll say it in Czech: Jmenuji se Eva Hrušková. Narodila jsem sem se v Československu, v Slovenské Republice, v Banské Bystrici. [My name is Eva Hruskova. I was born in Czechoslovakia, in Slovak Republic, in Banska Bystrica.]