Alabama Five - Text
Subject is a white male raised in what is known as Lower Alabama, on the Alabama-Florida border in a small farming community. It is interesting to note that the subjects Alabama 5 and 6, grew up not far from each other, are about the same age, and, while they share similar family backgrounds, have markedly different dialects. Most obvious in this subject's speech is the hard, almost swallowed [r] which keeps the resonance area moving toward the throat. Typical in southern speech is[shtr] for [str] so your hear "shtroke" for stroke. In this subject you hear a consistent dipthongalized treatment for neutral vowels as "kee ut" for kit, and a loss of the dipthong in words like life- you hear "laf" instead. Recorded by Daydrie Hague and edited by Paul Meier. Running time: 00:04:10
TRANSCRIPTION
’s north of Mobile. (Uh) My grandfather and my p-- my parents, they’ve lived there all their lives. (Um) I’ve helped to raise cows on the farm. And we’re all big football fans. (Um) My grandfather he also-- (um) he raised cotton, and he raised soybeans. And my mother, she has-- she has lived there her whole life. (Uh) She graduated from the same high school I did. I graduated from (uh) a high school-- Flomaton High School with the class of ‘73. (Um) We’re right there on the Florida-Alabama line. It’s (um)-- The town Flomaton comes from the beginning of Florida, F-L-O, the end of Alabama, M-A, and then town, T-O-N.
(Um) I mentioned I helped (uh) raise cows. (U) We would (um)-- we would herd ’em up, we would take ’em to the butcher, and (uh) we’d have ’em butchered, and we would (uh) we would-- pretty much our own steaks and our hamburgers would come from the cows that we had raised. (Um) Again (uh) we… were-- we did a lot of farming. My father was raised (uh) near (um) where (um) I was bor-- I was raised at. It’s a little community called (uh) Deer Range, Alabama. (Um) He-- he went to a high school called Repton, and (um) he had lived there until he met my mother, and they married and (uh) moved back to where my grandparents lived, (um) and we’ve lived ever since. We live probably about 50 yards from each other. We live on a dirt road, and (um) if anything ever happens, we can-- we go back and forth, and, you know, pretty much talk to each other, if we need to.
We (um, uh)-- we do do a lot of hunting. (Uh) We deer hunt. Deer huntin’ is a-- is a big thing (um) where I’m from. (Um) A lot of people take it real serious. (Um) We-- we turkey hunt. We hunt for-- hunt for dove. We hunt squirrel. (Um) And we-- I-- I like to hunt. I turkey hunt. I deer hunt. I don’t do too much squirrel or dove hunting, but… I do like to deer hunt. And we-- we do (um)-- we do eat what we kill, so… And (uh) we usually-- we-- we-- we mount our heads of our deer, that we kill, and we keep our turkeys’ beards and things like that, so….
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JACQUELINE BAKER, ASSOCIATE EDITOR FOR TRANSCRIPTIONS, January 20, 2008