Georgia 4

Listen to Georgia 4, a 25-year-old man from Buford, Georgia, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 25

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/09/1992

PLACE OF BIRTH: Atlanta, Georgia

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: African American

OCCUPATION: graduate student

EDUCATION: three years of graduate school

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

At the time of this recording, he had spent two and a half years living in Lansing, Michigan.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker was born in Atlanta, Georgia, and raised in Buford, Georgia, Gwinnett County. (Buford is a small city 38 miles northeast of Atlanta.) He was raised with family members from Reidsville and Gainesville, Georgia. The speaker is studying to be an actor and has taken classes in speech and dialects.

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

RECORDED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/03/2018

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Uh, so I grew up in Buford, Georgia; it’s, like, thirty-five minutes outside of Atlanta. Um, I am a generation kid, so my family has been there for generations. I think I am the sixth or seventh generation that’s been in Buford. Um, I know that my grandfather went to Buford High School when it was, I think, Butler High, as the black school before they integrated, and then my mom went there, along with all of my uncles, and then I went there. So, I know I’m three generations of Buford school-system kids, which is kinda cool, I guess.

Um, yeah, uh, then, my dad’s side of my family — they grew up, uh, in Reidsville, Georgia, so I got to spend summers down in south Georgia, like, four and a half hours south of Buford. Um, but, um, yeah, but then I also have my, uh, grandmother’s relatives on my mom’s side who are from Gainsville, Georgia, which is thirty-five minutes north of Buford. So, I kinda, sort of, get, like, the entire state’s worth of, uh, growing-up experience. Uh, so I consider all three of those places, I guess, to be childhood homes and cities I grew up in.

[Interviewer: You said you used to go to your grandmother’s for summers. What was that like?]

Yeah, yeah, my grandmother on my dad’s side. Hot. Uh, hm, Reidsville, Georgia, is, uh, I believe — as, as it was described to me — is Reidsville’s only known for their prison system, so that tells you that there’s not a lot to there, I guess. Uh, I remember going, and it was before they had paved all of the roads in the town, so it was nothing but dirt and gravel roads, um, going through woods and stuff, and then acres and acres of plantation land and stuff like that. And, um, I learned how to drive, uh, down in south Georgia. Uh, my dad put me on a riding lawnmower that was, I believe — yeah, yeah, he put me on a riding lawnmower, put it on full speed and was like, “This how you gonna learn how to drive.” I ran into a tree.

Uh, there’s always the tire swing that we always swung on; um, no A.C, so when it gets to hundred-and-five or, like, ninety-five at night, sleeping is real great. Um, there was a Dairy Queen, one, singular Dairy Queen, um, so, and then, like, uh, Family, uh, Dollar stores, General Stores, rather. Uh, yeah, but we would go, and my favorite thing was waking up in the morning, drenched in sweat, mind you, but, waking up in the morning to the smell of my grandma cooking country bacon, those, like, thick, thick slices of bacon, and scrambled eggs and homemade biscuits and eating that and her kicking us out and saying: “Don’t get bit by the ants, and don’t let mosquitoes in the house, ‘cause I got the fan on, so don’t let my cool air out,” with, however that works.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jason Dernay (under supervision of Deric McNish)

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/03/2018

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.