North Carolina Ten - Text
This 42 year old Caucasian male, an attorney, was born in 1958 in the same town where he was
raised and now practices law--Burnsville, (pop.1500) Yancey County, North Carolina. This is in
the Appalachian Mountains, western N. C. I am told he is looked on as a highly eligible bachelor
who grew up in "privilege". He practices in his father's law firm and is a very active "mover and
shaker". He went to Davidson, a small but prestigious college in the state and graduated from the
highly competitive University of North Carolina Law School.
Unlike some Southern speakers, the subject keeps up a pretty rapid delivery.
Note his strong retracted "r" and the substitutions of "d" for "t" in words like
"futile"and "beautiful". The "h" in "her" is eliminated as is the "t" in "county".
He is inconsistent about his use of "ing" endings, saying "mornin'", but also "surprising".
More often he uses the full "ing" ending.
The speaker rarely elongates a vowel ("vet" is an exception). Even the vowel in "time",
"white" "implied", "required", etc. is short. The diphthong in "thousand", "tower", and "house"
begins with a higher front vowel sound. The pure vowel in "so" and "goat" becomes a diphthong
which may begin either with a front vowel or a schwa. The vowel in "fleece" and "be" begins with a schwa.
Note the pronunciation of "duke" and of "cure". "Yellow" ends with a schwa.
Recorded August 2000 by Pat Toole and edited by Paul Meier March 2001. Running time: 00:03.49
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
This is a story from 1976, about me, a poor high school student, who’s daddy wouldn’t buy h’m a car when everybody else had a brand new car. And I had to drive a school bus to keep from riding it. So I drove my school bus and near the end of the year, when I turned, I guess, eighteen, ‘s getting ready to go to college after having suffered through high school without having a car, I was offered a choice of a car, principally so they wouldn’t have to drive me to college. And since we had to keep the sales tax money in the county, the choices were at the Chevrolet place or the Ford place. So I had a choice between a Chevy Vega and a Ford Pinto. And I went with the Chevrolet Vega, which wasn’t exactly a sexy car--years later I heard Stoney Norris tell me that when I was--still had the car almost ten years later, all the other kids felt sorry for me having to drive that thing. But shortly after I had the car, two or three weeks afterwards, one afternoon I was driving through town and saw Lou Ann Knipe and Linda Harding come walking down the sidewalk. Linda was nice enough, Lou Ann was just beautiful--she’d gone to Cane River and never paid me any attention, but I saw her walking down the sidewalk and was so excited that she could see me, even if it was a Vega, and I was coming, up near the Gulf station, down at th’ bottom of the hill where the old hospital used to be, cruisin’ around, looking over at Linda and Lou Ann on the sidewalk, and failed to notice that Ray Higgins, who was a post--postal delivery guy, was sittin’ blinking turning left, getting ready to go up Swift St. to his house. And I turned around just in time to slam on my brakes, skid a little bit, and my front left light crashed into the back of Ray’s car. He always had a bad neck to begin with, and he got out holding his neck, and I’s afraid I’d killed him or something, and before I took up with him, my last sight of Lou Ann was she and Linda go on walking down the sidewalk, giggling--quite a traumatic experience.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY SANDRA LINDBERG 20 APRIL, 2008.