Finland Four - Transcription
I was born in a little town called Kotka. It's near the Russian Border and
it's um. it's a town, it's a harbor town, it's uh, one of Finland's biggest
most important harbor towns. And my mother was Finnish, my father was
Swedish, and I spent most of my up-bringing, well maybe 'bout two years in
that town then we moved near Helsinki and I started school in a Swedish
school. I was eight years old and um we were, we stayed near Helsinki for
about five years then we moved again a bit north of Helsinki and there I did
most of my schooling in a Swedish school. I had one brother. At the school I.
met Laurie and um came over to England. We stayed here about three years. Then
um we went back to Finland, had our children and now the children are grown
up. And now I'm free to study myself for a change again and the English
language and well maybe my English language has been modified greatly because
I have Swedish and Finnish and I've had 30 years of practice so maybe I've
lost a lot of it, the accent that normally you would have. I've actually
deliberately tried to lose it. I don't know how I managed if it's gone or not
but um I think that I haven't got a very clear Finnish accent any more or a
very clear Swedish one. Well If I said first, "Well here's a story for you" I
would say in Finnish, [speaks in Finnish] and if I say it in Swedish it will
be like um, [speaks in Swedish] which isn't a clear translation but that's how
I would say it. "Sarah Perry was a veterinary nurse" would be in Finnish "[speaks in Finnish] nurse? veterinary nurse? I don't know what I would.
nurse? And in Swedish it would be [speaks in Swedish] in Finnish.
Transcribed by William Paulson, March, 2005.