North Carolina 19

Listen to North Carolina 19, a woman in her 20s from Greensboro, North Carolina, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 20s

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): early 1980s

PLACE OF BIRTH: Greensboro, North Carolina

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: African-American

OCCUPATION: university student and actress

EDUCATION: Subject has a bachelor’s degree in theatre and is pursuing her master’s.

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

The subject had been living in Las Vegas, Nevada, for two years at the time of this interview.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Phil Hubbard

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/04/2006

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’m from Greensboro, North Carolina. Um, one thing that I love about North Carolina is the beautiful scenery: the trees, the cornfields, the tobacco fields, everything about it is just beautiful. Um, they call North Carolina God’s country. And that means when God comes back, he gonna come back and get us firs’, and then he’s gonna come back and get the rest of y’all. [laughs] When I was about, uh, 10 years old, I disobeyed my mother an’ I, uh, went outside when I wasn’t supposed to, and I was on top of my friend’s shoulder, and I broke my arm in six different places. And I had emergency surgery that night, but two weeks later when I got home, I still got a wuppin’. [unintelligible] You would’a thought that me breakin’ my arm and havin’ the surgery was enough, but not in my mom’s house. [laughs] Um, bein’ out here in Las Vegas, um, by myself, I’m very lonely at times. I talk to my parents every day. I just long to go back home an’ be with them. They came out for two weeks to see me in a show an’ I loved it. It felt so good to know that I was goin’ home and my parents were there. I have a sister and a brother, and I have a new niece, who is the light of my whole family’s life. Um, one day I hope to get married and have kids also. I just enjoy life, an’ I look every day — I look forward every day to doin’ what God has me to do. An’ I’m gonna be an actress, an’ I’m not gonna stop ‘til I’m …

TRANSCRIBED BY: Sandra Lindberg

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 01/05/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Residing in the Western United States for two years has had minimal impact on her dialect. She has, however, been able to shift rather successfully to General American speech or other dialects when necessary. The dialect is rich with Southern features including: 1) An occasional reduction/elimination of /r/ coloration, particularly in unstressed vowel endings of words such as mother, father and brother. 2) Frequent contraction of /ing/ endings to /in/ (goin’, comin’, etc.) 3) Modification of final “l” sound in words such as all and call, to a lip-rounded sound where the tongue makes no motion toward the alveolar ridge; sometimes the /l/ is eliminated altogether. 4) Words with the short /e/ sound, as in DRESS, are often pronounced with the short /i/, as in KIT. 5) Clear reduction of the diphthong in the PRICE set to the single “cardinal 4” vowel. 6) Occasional substitution of /f/ for /th/ in word endings. (Norf Carolina) 7) The word “on” becomes lengthened to “aaawn,” 8) /G/ endings, as in “strong,” are often shifted from /ng/ to a plosive /g/. 9) Speaker freely uses the colloquial “y’all.”

COMMENTARY BY: Phil Hubbard

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 13/04/2006

The archive provides:

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• 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).

 

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