Experience with Transcription

I always make reference to being a baby speaker, especially with this realization here in this massive city, never mind this massive city, this massive institution, University of Alberta. It has such a diverse population and instruction in so many languages.

I am going back to school, and I am so excited.  My previous experiences may not have led me here, they would have led me into being underemployed still with the School District back home, trying to find odd jobs writing, tutoring, or crafting/sewing.  ".25 time" I signed with them for four years, and had increasing obligation of my time to maybe ".5".  I loved my time with the students and the staff @ four schools, 3 in the Nicola-Similkameen school district-Merritt Secondary, Merritt, Central, & Nicola Canford Elementary- and one independent band operated school within the Lower Nicola Indian Band. If only I could feed my family on love. :P

I mostly enjoyed pro-d (professional development), maybe a reason I want to teach is I love school.  Of course, it hasn't always been that way.  I was thinking on a topic for this long lost blog, and I thought explaining what my experience has been. 

I'm not by any means an expert, I think to be deemed an expert you have to be someone like May Moses perhaps. wow! I am always in wonder with the complexity of speech in our language, especially when I hear her. I think of it as a ladder all the time. Elders, and my teachers' advisers are at the tip top, my teachers are in the next rungs, my aunts, my mother, my fellow learners and I fit in there, then our students, down to the real first time learners, whether they are actual immersion babies, or in "Thompson" class for the first time @ grade 5, or 9?

Through hearing immersion babies babbling, I am imagining the world and the people in it who speak or are learning our language as being born when they started learning? or comparing their knowledge of the language to if it was learned in a natural immersion setting. That is where I say I am a baby. I use a very simple structure in language, at time more complex only where I understand transitive subject and object, am able to add in more meaning with a conjunctive/ morpheme of some sort, maybe throw in an emphatic term if I remember.

Anyway, this is my idea of a Point Form Summary Report for you on Transcribing Nle'kepmxcin:

Challenges on hearing what is being said:

• Words unknown used in vocabulary
• “Slurred” sounding speech 
• clarity or dialectal differences, life-experience differences
• Very rapid speech
• difficult to differentiate where the words, roots and morphemes end and begin
• sounds not heard that are detrimental to comprehension
• Varied patterns in structure of speech, sentences
• wording, transitive, intransitive, variations of more complex language, word order
• difficult for new speaker to understand

Successes when hearing:

• Enunciated wording, familiarity
• Consistently structured phrases familiarity
• Repetition, easily recognized
• Finding resources/ assistance when needed

Paragraph Summary:

       On being enlisted to do the transcription of some selected recordings of elder’s stories for the First Voices Project, here are some challenges and successes that have been met.

Challenges were experienced overall in the areas of not knowing some select vocabulary that had been presented.  Notably, some speakers were more versed in Nłeʔkepmxcin.  From this experience, there is support in the belief that there is always lifelong learning to be done with this language. 

Among the challenges to be overcome, there were also dialectal variants such as lost sounds because of both speed and what one can only describe as an evolution of distinct sounds that seem to be disappearing in speech. 

Perhaps the last challenges were apart from the norm, uniquely structured sentences used some cases. Perhaps it is an issue of passive and active voice?

       Successes were evident where individual interviewees used clear sound pronunciation, and used consistency with their language structure, and repetition was another thing easily recognizable.  The last point that I thought it fit to mention is availability of getting help where needed. 

It has been a pleasure to hear and learn about these lessons and entertaining stories.

* Transcription of Daisy Major's story on the “Ugly Boy”

* Transcription of “Transformer” Story by Cəlmencut

* Transcription of Cəlmncut telling about the “Little People”

* Transcription of “Kəʔkeʔłes Ekʷu tk Kʷəṣo” by Amelia Washington

* Transcription of “3 Bears” by Amelia Washington
Check these stories out on First Voices! keep in mind what I said before about the site. and like I said no one is an expert, especially because it is a relatively new thing to write and read language, but its fun to learn and improve everyday.


(Apologies for not posting in a LOOOONG while.  I am ultimate excuse maker, I was ACTUALLY thinking I couldn't post because I lost my mic, LOL, what a world :P)