Mississippi 3

Listen to Mississippi 3, a 63-year-old man from Grenada, Mississippi, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 63

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 26/06/1937

PLACE OF BIRTH: Grenada County, Mississippi

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: retired (factory worker, cotton picker, jailer, cab driver)

EDUCATION: high school

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Krista Scott

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 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:

I was born in Grenada County, six twenty six thirty seven.  I started out workin’ with my father, and later I start workin’ for the Coca-Cola Bottle Company in Grenada.  And I worked there, ‘bout seventeen, eighteen year, and, uh, they closed down and I drove cab awhile.  Then I went to Rockwell International and worked there about sixteen years in Rockwell.  I got laid off at Rockwell, and I drove cab awhile and I went to the police department; worked there as a jailer for three-and-a-half year.  And I, I was sick when I left there cause the job had closed down and I — so I got a security job and worked, just talking two year, about a year-and-a-half, and so I retired.  And so now I’m here at home, tryin’ t’ enjoy life, just take things as they come.  They’d be goin’ — they’d be goin’ to the field, me n’ brother had never went to the field before, and we slipped off and went to, went to the field I don’t know, we were picking cotton or hoeing cotton.  And the first day we slipped off and went, the man had a breakdown, we ten o’clock get home that night. [Laughs]  I, I  never forget that old man; he stay over in Charleston now. Old  man Ham Luke. I think he in Memphis now, and, um, all the kids’d love be around him cause, you know, he was, he was, he was real nice, you know, he, he was a real nice old man, you know, he talked cotton shop and, uh, cotton pickers and things.  And me and my brother had never went and I borrowed, and he, he, he workin’ hard and he wasn’t goin’ to give us no money.  And I mean, you know, he buy, you know, we had what we need but cash money we didn’t had that; we wanted money to put in our own pockets; we still went to the fields make us some money.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Elsa Richardson, Sandra Lindberg, and Olivia Mointeith

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 19/05/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Some of the predominant dialect features are: the omission of most final consonants, and median consonants in word such as “seven”; substitution of /d/ for “th” in words such as “that,” “there,” “them,” and “those”; substitution of “i” for “e” in words such as “kids” and “end,” and “ee” for “i” in some instances such as “kids” (“keedth wuh lidl”); omission of /r/ in final position, such as “year”; substitution of “th” for final /s/ in “is”; and vowel glides on words such as “driver,” “down,” “retired,” “field,” and “night.” In addition, note the  dropping of final unstressed syllables, and eliding or omitting unstressed primary or median syllables. For instance, “before” = “fo,” “forget” = ” ‘git,” “Coca-cola” = “kok’kol,” and “security” = “se ‘kuhtee,” Lastly, note the omission of being verbs (“he real nice ol’ man,” “he in Memphis now”).

COMMENTARY BY: Krista Scott

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 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.