Virginia 4

Listen to Virginia 4, a 68-year-old woman from Martinsville, Virginia, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 68

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 10/1932

PLACE OF BIRTH: Martinsville, Virginia

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: N/A

EDUCATION: high school

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

The subject lived in North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Indiana for substantial periods before moving to Alabama about ten years before the recording was made.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject is the wife of Virginia 3.

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): 15/07/2001

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 Virginia in October of 1932. My mother says that they had to light a fire in the fireplace, to keep the bedroom warm. She tol’ me of the wallpaper with the roses, an’ of the beautiful organdy lace curtains at the window. I was raised in Martinsville, Virginia; schooled, loved, an’ married there. Our second child was borned in Martinsville. My father, a born-an’-bred North Carolinian, met, wooed and married my mother. In fact, they eloped, back to North Carolina to be married. Martinsville, at the time that I was growin’ up, was a small little community, but by the time I hit high school, DuPont had built a plant there, an’ from all over the country came these foreigners, with dialects we didn’t quite understand, but who improved the quality of life in Martinsville immensely. The education system in our high school was equal to the first two years of college in any university in Virginia. I married my husband in Martinsville, Virginia. We left there, an’ after 20-some moves, have come to Alabama. Martinsville was located on that edge of the Carolina line, an’ if you wanted to be really a rowdy teenager, you got into a car, driven by a young man that had a rumble-seat, an’ you drove across the line, to North Carolina, to a place called Spooky Hollow, an’ danced to the jukebox. This was a time of growin’ up. This was the time of Worl’ War II. This is when I would go to a movie for twenty-five cents, could stay all day, paid ten cents for my popcorn. These were happy, beautiful times, but the mos’ gorgeous times in my life came after I was married an’ moved all over the country. An’ I was teased about my Southe’n accent. I was teased that, I could be found anywhere in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, because of the way I talked. But ironically enough, during that point of my life, there was a President Johnson in the White House, an’ many of the people thought I had come from Texas, because their only exposure was to hear Ladybird Johnson. My Southern drawl has always proved me well, even though I thought ev’ryone talked like I did. Until the moves. The moves have made me listen. The moves to Indiana began to tell me that: 1) They had no mountains, and 2) They talked flat. The move back south though, to the Deep South, was a rude awakening. How dare they call Virginia “Northern?” Ev’ry ancestor that I had rolled over in their grave the first time I had a friend in Alabama say, “Oh, you really are from the North.” However, the l — Deep South welcomes you to their bosom, like a wide, wide oak tree. An’ for that I’m eternal grateful. …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Jacqueline Baker

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/07/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The subject was born in southwestern Virginia near the North Carolina line. Her mother was a Virginia native, but her father was raised in the North Carolina mountains. The speaker has a melodic, rangey vocal pattern, with resonant placement in the head and the very front of the mouth. Vowels are elongated for emphasis, which contributes to the sound we characterize as a drawl. The use of {r} is quite variable here depending on its position within the word, and it often affects the sounds which surround, as in “vurry” for very. Often the pronunciation of vowels and diphthongs are reversed, as “wahd” for wide and “stay-und” for the short {a} vowel of stand. Inconsistently, you hear the characteristic i-e substitution, as in “expinsive” for “expensive” and the dropping of “-ing” to “in,” as in “relaxin’ bath.” Overall, the speaker has an animated sound, much like that of a storyteller.

COMMENTARY BY: Daydrie Hague

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/07/2001

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.