Finland Five - Text
The following information was provided by the subject, who submitted the recording:
Age: 23
Gender: Male
Occupation: Student
Educational level: In college
I was born in the city of Turku and I have lived here my entire life.
I first started learning English from the early video games, and I kind of taught myself using a dictionary. Officially I started learning English in school from my teacher when I was 9 years old.
I spoke Finnish in the recording and I said: Tervetuloa Suomeen. ( translation: Welcome to Finland. )
Date of make: 26th of November in 2006
I talked about how I started to learn English and a little of Finland in general.Edited by Paul Meier February 26, 2007. Running time: 00:04:20
Transcription of Unscripted Speech
Well, I was born in 1983 in a city called Turku, which is located in uh, the south-west part of Finland. Um, I'm the oldest child, and uh, I have two younger sisters.....um, I have spent my entire life here in this city, and lived a uh, pretty normal life, I guess, so far. I officially uh, started learning English in the third grade in elementary school, uh, but before that I had already--already learned a lot of words and sentences by uh, playing the early video games, uh, you really needed to learn a lot of English in order to play them uh, so that's uh, basically when my interest in English began, and uh, I've been learning English ever since. Um, uh, well, uh, a couple of words of Finland. Ah, Finland is a very beautiful country, and uh, we have uh--huge differences between seasons here. I mean, during the winter, uh, the temperature can drop below -30 degrees Celsius, and whereas uh, during the summer, it can go as high as uh, plus 30 degrees Celsius, so there's uh, huge differences. Uh, Finnish people are uh, generally very nice and hospitable but when uh...us Finnish people are also known for being a little shy especially when it comes to strangers so we're eh, uh, well uh, if I have to say something in Finnish I guess it would be something like uh, Tervetuloa Suomeen, which means welcome to Finland.
Unscripted Speech Transcribed by Faith Harvey 15 March 2008