South Carolina 12

Listen to South Carolina 12, a 38-year-old woman from Huger, South Carolina. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 38

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 18/09/1983

PLACE OF BIRTH: Huger, South Carolina

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Black

OCCUPATION: small-business owner

EDUCATION: high school

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS: none

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The speaker grew up both learning formal English in school and speaking Gullah at home from a very early age. The speaker currently serves as a storyteller specializing in the Gullah dialect and actively uses the dialect as both informal communication and as an instructive device outside of the Gullah community.

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

RECORDED BY: Jacqueline Springfield

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/04/2022

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 grew up in a little town called Huger, South Carolina, and I remember all them years, um, Mama and Father side live on east side of the road; been a Y in the middle of the church; the church been, uh, St. Paul — not Saint Paul, Bethel AME Church. My grandaddy on both sides used to go there. Um, I remember my grandaddy on my maternal mother’s side: He always would say “Wi gwan on to church now.” [We’re going on to church now.] And then when we get there, we get to Sunday school and we learn a little lesson. Then after the lesson, he start singing a song called “Kumbaya.” I always wondered what that song had mean, and as I got older I understand that that song was a Charleston song; it was a Charleston song made in the plantations of Charleston by our ancestors. But my grandaddy always sang “Come by Here” because he believed that it was a praying song. He believed that that song would get him through anything, and he sung that song every Sunday until his passing in 2011.

Then on my other side of the family, I remember my, my paternal mother, grandmother — she raised us on a farm. I mean, she would butcher a hog and we have hoghead cheese, and chitlins, and, uh, hog bog and hog mawg and, um — that’s all the parts of the hog mixed together in one big pot. And then she make us, uh, clean the chitlins out, and the things that come out of there I never eat that again. Then we had to do mountain oysters; if they ain’t come from no sea, I ain’t know where he come from. But, uh, growing up on a farm, you learned a lot; you learned how to become a pioneer person; you learn how to cook different things that today would make me be a survivor compared to what’s in the grocery store. Um, some of those things could be cutter; some of those things could be squirrel or coon or possum gravy brown; and, yeah, once you had supper, you got a snack, but after about 7 o’clock at night don’t you go in grandmama kitchen, because that mean the kitchen closed and you ain’t allowed in there now and you weren’t going to be in there until the next day.

[For more on the history of “Kumbaya,” visit Wikipedia.]

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Springfield

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/05/2022

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Speech is mostly non-rhotic. Contraction of “going to” and “go on” are often pronounced “gwan” or “gon.’” Note the pen-pin merger on words like “then,” “them,” and “remember.” ð in initial position intermittently becomes “d” in words like “them” and “that. And θ in final position intermittently becomes “f” in words like “with” and “south.”

The speaker is a professional storyteller and partially translated the scripted text into Gullah as she spoke it. She does less of that in her extemporaneous speech and does so to illustrate the difference between Gullah (particularly when she quotes her grandparents) and standard English. Notice how adept she is at codeswitching.

COMMENTARY BY: Jacqueline Springfield

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 16/05/2022

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.