Mississippi Two - Text
Subject is an African American female, fifty-two years old; born and raised in Grenada County in Central Mississippi, She works in a hosiery factory in the small town of Grenada, where she received her high school education. She speaks of her long ancestry in that same county, and about her courtship with her husband. Some of the predominant dialect features are: the omission of most final consonants; substition of /d/ for 'th' in words such as 'that', 'the', 'those'; vowel glides on words such as 'live,' 'mill,' 'twelve', 'mile'; 'ing' endings are consistently reduced to 'in'; omission of /r/ in final position, and in the medial position on words such as 'courting' ("kou:tin") and 'forward' ("fahwuh"); substitution of 'th' for final /s/ in selected words such as "Ole Miss"; dropping final /s/ on possessive pronouns and many plural words("he eighty-nine now"); special pronunciation on 'children' ("chirrun"), 'several' ("sev'l") and 'only' ("onliest"). The recording was made by Krista Scott and edited by Paul Meier.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I’ve lived in Grenada all of my life an’ worked here in Grenada. I’ve worked at the hosier’ mill, where we make pantyhose fo’ the last 32 years, an’-- Well, let’s face it, my life-- [Interviewer: Uh-huh] hosier’ mill, (uh) church, grocer’ store, then back home. An’ I have (uh) one chil’, one son ruther. He’s-- well, he’ll be 28 the 17th of June. An’ I also have (uh) several stepchi’ren, with they all mine. An’ also I have one granddaughter in college right now. She’s a senior at Old Miss. My great-great gran’daddy was born as a slave, an’ he was reared in Grenada County. An’-- an’ it just-- I mean-- the-- Grenada County is the onliest place we ever lived, tha’s all. That’s the bottom line. So we didn-- we had met an’ ev’rythang, but we didn’ do too much cou’tin’ ’cause my daddy, he was one o’ those older one’ he didn’ care too much about all tha’(uh) cou’tin’. In oth’ words, he wasn’ ready for me to lea’e home. I don’ care how old I was, he thought I was a baby, I guess. An’, by the way, he 89 now, an’ I’m 52, so you can see the age diff’n’. Okay, (uh) well we was goin’ to get marrie’, so what we done-- I was livin’ in the country an’ he wa’ livin’ in town, so we sent li’l messages back an’ fo’ward from work where he could get it. So we made plans to get married, an’ we was in town, an’ I wen’ over to the N________ house, where we was goin’ to get married at, an’ got married. An’ ’en, later on, he came out to my daddy’ house an’ got me. So that was it….