Brazil Six - Text
Subject is an undergraduate at California State University, Fullerton. She is in her third year of studies pursuing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in General Theatre and hopes one day to become an actress. She has traveled all throughout Europe many times. She is half Portuguese and half Japanese so both cultures have influenced her speech a great deal. She lived in Japan for a few years, but she is originally from San Paolo, Brazil. Her English is also influenced a great deal from her American husband who is fluent in Spanish. Since she is a native speaker and has had American speech teachers as well, her dialect is extremely unique. Her syntax structure in conversation, is a direct representation of Portuguese.
Recorded by Bethany Mangum
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED TEXT
I was born in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Um, Sao Paolo is a big city. Like we would compare to New York um, where there are many subways and bus, you know, a lot of people on the streets, it’s a mess. Um, uh, what else? Um, when I lived there, um I, I, I was going to University there and I was studying education, and at the same time I was doing theatre, besides school. And, um, I dunno, Sao Paolo is a really uh, a place that you really have many museums and theatres and a lot of arts, so you can always see something. There’s um always something to do you know um, um. There is this avenue, that is called uh, Paolisto Avenue and there is this museum, masp, and there are a lot of arts, and they always bring new arts like awhile to stay there, then they, they, take to someplace else, it’s really interesting. My husband! He okay, he, he had um, his best friend, was uh, was in, uh, missionary work in Brazil, so he went, my husband bought a ticket for Brazil to visit him. But when he was going for some reason, he, his uh friends wife got sick to they had to come back to Brazil. So my husband like, eh, didn’t have the reason to go, but he couldn’t change the ticket. So because yeah, they, bec(ause), they couldn’t change the ticket so he knew just his friend, there was another friend that knew Brazil, that went to Brazil before so he said, “Bro! I’ll go with you and then we just change the ticket to Sao Paolo instead of the other city you were going to.” And then that’s why, that’s what they did. And then they went to my city, and this, his friend knew my church, I used to go to this Japanese church, and so, then this friend knew my church and they went there to visit and we met there! At church! <laughs> And then, when we met, I, I knew like really few words in English like, “Hi my name is Suzan, nice to meet you,” you know, things like that. And um, my husband, he, he’s white, but he learned Spanish, and because Spanish and Portuguese are so similar, he was speaking Spanish with me and I was speaking Portuguese. I knew some Spanish words so we could really slowly, we could talk and then, then little by little I could start learn English and that’s…yeah, but not necessarily taught, I mean, as I said, as I was talking to you like the, for example, like “the” I do the “t” “h” sound I know that I have to put the uh, my tongue between my teeth, for example, but uh, its like things like that he taught me, but base my English come from um when I came here and I start go to Citrus College and I start like just study like um, history of theatre, things all about theatre its, that, that I like, that’s, that way I start learning English like doing something that I like, you know, that’s pretty much (it). <laughs> Well I went backpacking to Europe, I went to meet with my friend, my best friend. She’s living in Ire(land), in Dublin, so we met in London and we stayed there in a hostel, which was really interesting. And um, from there we went to Oslo, in Norway and it’s really, um, interesting place, it was really hot and we walked a lot but it was really beautiful. Like, many, many place that you can go and see and the people! Oh my gosh! We met this old, old guy, he was like feeding the birds on the ocean, not in the ocean, um the canal, canal? Yeah, um then <laughs> and then he knew like few words in English and uh he, he, he, he started like feeding the birds, like giving them, he was feeding the birds shrimp and then he start saying, “Oh this is my boss, and this is my daughter and this is my cousin.” It was the only words that he knew, and then some way, we start talking like that and then we even took a picture together and he hugging us, and he was so sweet.
Transcribed by Bethany Mangum 11/20/08
Recording time- 08:02