Kentucky 3

Listen to Kentucky 3, an 82-year-old woman from Carroll County, Kentucky, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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Note: This subject reads only part of the scripted speech, in this case The Rainbow Passage.

BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 82

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1918

PLACE OF BIRTH: Carroll County, Kentucky

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: housewife to the county judge

EDUCATION: grade school, self-educated

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

The subject has lived in Carroll County, 45 miles northeast of Louisville, her entire life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

Her country or farm dialect has been softened by moving to the small town of Carrollton.

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

RECORDED BY: Rinda Frye

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/01/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

You milked the cows. You fed the chickens. [laughter] You slopped the pigs. [laughter] And then you went off to work. W-we raised tobacco; that was the main crop. And we also, of course, raised a garden. We raised our food. We didn’t have a dairy. You know it was just for your family. Just milk and then you know you had the milk for the pigs. My brother now he, he had a — his own cows, see, so he, we sold the cream. We separated the milk and got the cream, and that’s what we sold was the cream. We sold cream and eggs. And my brother had a cow, you know, he was older, two years older than me, and he had a cow, you know, so he had his cream for his spending money, you know, so when he wanted to go somewhere and didn’t have time to milk his cow he would hire me to milk it for him. And th’ only way I could milk, uh, you know you — people take one hand — course we didn’t have milkers then, like they later had. But I couldn’t do it with one hand. I had to put one hand on the — on the tit —yeah, that’s what they call ‘em — and one up above that one — use both of them to get a stream of milk. But he paid me a quarter every time I milked for him. [laughter] ‘Course later after they moved away from there and lived down, lived down in Hunter’s Bottom, lived down there, but I was married then. Um, they had milkers in there. [laughter] And they had lot of cows then, you know, ‘cause they sold the whole milk. ‘Course living out there on a hill there was no milk route there but when they lived, moved to where there was a milk route, well, they sold the whole milk. ‘N it was easier. [Interviewer: How’d you meet your husband?] Well, uh ‘course, we came to Carrollton to get our supplies and he worked in the store, in Carrollton Woods’s hardware and grocery store. And when we’d come to town my mother’d come t’ town to buy groceries and I’d be with her and when we’d go in Woods’s store, well, boy, when she would buy candy — ‘course we always bought some candy to take home — and he would just be putting that candy in her sack ‘n not even looking to see how much he’s putting in there — he’d be looking at me all the time. [Interviewer: How old were you?]  Oh, I don’t know how old I was then. [laughter] Well, I guess I’s, I had to be about 20 ‘cause I was 22 when I married, but, oh, we’d get the biggest sack a’ candy.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Steve Gonabe and Sandra Lindberg

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 06/04/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

You will hear a good example of a pleasant Kentucky country or farm dialect, somewhat softened by her having moved from farm life to the small town of Carrollton, and by her many years as wife to the county judge. You will notice, for instance, that this subject speaks with less nasality than is typical of Kentucky farm dialects and that she is careful to aspirate her “wh” sounds. Although she ended her education in grade school, she is well read and highly intelligent.

COMMENTARY BY: Rinda Frye

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/01/2000

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.