Alabama Ten - Text
The subject is a white middle aged female, raised in the area known in Alabama as "the valley". Her family has lived in this area "as long as anyone can remember" and she has lived within a 50-mile radius of Valley all her life. Her speech is an interesting mix of rural sounds and an old-fashioned Southern formality in articulation and construction. The speaker proceeds with a rapid tempo, and tends to move with increasing stress towards the end of the sentence. There is a variable use of [r] depending on its position in the word, and the number of syllables in the word. For example in the word" tower" the [r] is dropped, but in the word "tire" the [r] is rather hard and retroflex, and a linking [r] is almost never used. Diphthongs move toward monophthongs as in "choice". Monophthongs become diphthongs as in "bath". Final[ o] becomes a schwa sound as in Montevalluh for Montevallo, and often a final long [ee] becomes a short [i] as in "immediatelih" for "immediately." There is a tendency to both elongate and nasalize the vowels.
Recorded and edited by Daydrie Hague 2002. Running time: 00:04:35
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in West Point, Georgia, and raised in Lanett, Alabama, in a small, southern community of towns, which was referred to as "the valley." And, this area is located on the Alabama-Georgia line, *(j)ust about *ninety or so miles south of Atlanta, Georgia. I've always lived in this area, 'cept for the time that I 'tended college in Montevallo, Alabama *'n', uh, as far as I know, all of my family lived in this area before me, (fo') as far back as anybody can remember *'n', for many years, the cotton-mill industry was, actually, the last flood of the valley area. The mill cottonry provided jobs for most of the people there, money for schools and also a lot of recreational centers, *plus a lot more. As the economy changed, however, some of the mills down-sized or closed 'n' as a result, *many "valley-ans" today must commute to jobs outside the valley area. I grew up in a family with both parents, an older sister and a younger brother. My family was musically inclined and we all played musical instruments. Ev'ryone in my family also enjoyed reading and this is still one of my greatest pleasures. I find it to be a wonderful escape. *Also, one of the favorite Southern pass-times, at least in my family, was tellin' stories. You jus' pass them down from generation to generation, they're not written anywhere.'n' each time you tell them, they become *more fanciful or *more involved. I 'tended and was graduated from the Lanett City School System, and I subsequently attended *several schools: the University of Montevallo, Auburn University, Southern Union State Communi*ty College, and Troy State University in Phenix City, Alabama, *before finally earning my B.S. degree. By that time, I had a child, and it was a little bit harder to attend school, so it took me quite a while to do this. All of these schools, except the University of Montevallo, were within fifty miles of my home. I believe, that *probably, the greatest influences on my speech had to be my family and my earliest friends, since I've never really lived anywhere but in "the valley" area. And, also, I received very little influence from television as a small child, because our family di(d) not even own a T.V. until I was five or six years old.
Transcribed by Lynzee Ford, March 2005