Alabama 2

Listen to Alabama 2, a 20-year-old woman from Birmingham, Alabama, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1980

PLACE OF BIRTH: Birmingham, Alabama

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: student

EDUCATION: When recorded, subject was a sophomore theatre major at university.

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

The subject has lived in Birmingham, Alabama, all of her life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She has a mild accent, due to vocal training, and she actively works to keep her native accent from coming through. However, it is easy for her to slip into the thicker, more stereotyped Southern accent when she imitates those around her.

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

RECORDED BY: Cynthia Blaise

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/01/2000

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’ve lived in Birmingham all of my life. Um, my mother was originally from Michigan, but she spent most of her life down here in Alabama, and my father has always lived here.  I went to Hewitt-Trussville, which is a really po-dunk kind of school, but it was a lot of fun. It taught me a lot of characterization. It was just very useful in theater. I’m a sophomore musical theater major, here at Birmingham Southern, and I plan, when I get out of school to maybe venture a little bit, maybe into Nashville, maybe Georgia, but not New York yet. It’s a little scary. It’s a little too big and busy for me.  The characters from my school, uh, would wear cowboy boots to school, and the big cowboy hats, and they’d talk ’bout huntin’ all the time, and what they did, and how many deers they caught over the weekend. And, you know, what they shot it with, and you know, “Do you like deers?” And I’d have to say [laughs], “I like them, but I don’t really like to shoot them.”  And, um, my grandmother, my great-grandmother, actually, was my favorite part about growing up as a child because she would always cook this incredible Thanksgiving meal. Just like Chris, she had the cornbread, and she used to fuss at me about not eating enough. Every single Thanksgiving she’d be like, “Don’t you want some more stuffin’? Girl, you’re getting’ skinnier every year. You’re just like a little bird.” And she would fuss at me so much. But, it was one of my favorite memories. Oh, she used to love to make black-eyed peas, and green beans, turkey, and ham, and oh, coconut cake, coconut cream cake, every Thanksgiving. It was the best. I have two brothers. One’s older and one’s younger, and the little one’s name is Bobby. And he hasn’t developed a real strong Southern accent yet, and I’m hoping he never will. But the first year I came home from college and I’d had all the vocal training, he looked at me, and I sa- I had said something to him. And he looked at me, he was like, “You done lost your accent.” I was like, “Bobby, I wasn’t aware that I ever had an accent.” And he goes, “Oh, yeah, you did.” So, he laughed at me a lot, and he sa- He calls me hoity-toity now because I don’t talk with a Southern accent.  I didn’t have to work as hard as other people do, I still, I hear it in my voice sometimes, and I try really hard not to let it come through. But I kind of appreciate it. I think it adds more voice to my, more character to my voice, and I kinda cherish it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 03/01/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY: N/A

COMMENTARY BY: N/A

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

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.