Alabama 10

Listen to Alabama 10, a woman from Lanett, Alabama, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: N/A

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

PLACE OF BIRTH: West Point, Georgia

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject was born in Georgia but moved to Lanett, Alabama, shortly after. She has lived in Alabama virtually all of her life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 2002

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I was born in West Point, Georgia, and raised in Lanett, Alabama, in a small, Southern community of towns, which was referred to as “the valley.” And, this area is located on the Alabama-Georgia line, (j)ust about ninety or so miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. I’ve always lived in this area, ‘cept for the time that I ‘tended college in Montevallo, Alabama ‘n’, uh, as far as I know, all of my family lived in this area before me, fo’ as far back as anybody can remember, ‘n’, for many years, the cotton-mill industry was, actually, the life’s blood of the valley area. The mill cottonry provided jobs for most of the people there, money for schools and also a lot of recreational centers, plus a lot more. As the economy changed, however, some of the mills down-sized or closed ‘n’ as a result, many “valley-ans” today must commute to jobs outside the valley area. I grew up in a family with both parents, an older sister and a younger brother. My family was musically inclined and we all played musical instruments. Ev’ryone in my family also enjoyed reading and this is still one of my greatest pleasures. I find it to be a wonderful escape. Also, one of the favorite Southern pasttimes, at least in my family, was tellin’ stories. You jus’ pass them down from generation to generation; they’re not written anywhere, ‘n’ each time you tell them, they become more fanciful or more involved. I ‘tended and was graduated from the Lanett City School System, and I subsequently attended several schools: the University of Montevallo, Auburn University, Southern Union State Community College, and Troy State University in Phenix City, Alabama, before finally earning my B.S. degree. By that time, I had a child, and it was a little bit harder to attend school, so it took me quite a while to do this. All of these schools, except the University of Montevallo, were within fifty miles of my home. I believe, that probably, the greatest influences on my speech had to be my family and my earliest friends, since I’ve never really lived anywhere but in “the valley” area. And, also, I received very little influence from television as a small child, because our family di[d] not even own a TV until I was 5 or 6 years old.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Lynzee Ford

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/2005

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject is a white, middle-aged female, raised in the area known in Alabama as “the valley.” Her family has lived in this area “as long as anyone can remember,” and she has lived within a 50-mile radius of the valley all her life. Her speech is an interesting mix of rural sounds and an old-fashioned Southern formality in articulation and construction. The speaker proceeds with a rapid tempo and tends to move with increasing stress toward the end of the sentence. There is a variable use of [r], depending on its position in the word and the number of syllables in the word. For example, in the word “tower,” the [r] is dropped, but in the word “tire” the [r] is rather hard and retroflex, and a linking [r] is almost never used. Diphthongs move toward monophthongs, as in “choice.” Monophthongs become diphthongs, as in “bath.” Final [o] becomes a schwa sound, as in Montevalluh for Montevallo, and often a final long [ee] becomes a short [i], as in “immediatelih” for “immediately.” There is a tendency to both elongate and nasalize the vowels.

COMMENTARY BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 2002

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.
• Text of the speakers’ biographical details.
• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
• In most cases, an orthographic transcription of the speakers’ unscripted speech.  In a small number of cases, you will also find a narrow phonetic transcription of the sample (see Phonetic Transcriptions for a complete list).  The recordings average four minutes in length and feature both the reading of one of two standard passages, and some unscripted speech. The two passages are Comma Gets a Cure (currently our standard passage) and The Rainbow Passage (used in our earliest recordings).

 

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.