This post will be a little different from the others as I’m working with a different text. I’ve been reading A Brief History of Seven Killings, by Marlon James. It takes place in 1960s Jamaica and is structured into short, monologic chapters narrated by a huge cast of characters, ranging from local gangsters to American journalists. Because I’ve been working on this project, I’ve been reading some dialect-heavy sections of the book to myself out loud. I decided to record one of these sessions to get a sense of how well my speech is coming along.
Listening again, I’ve noticed a few things that I need to keep in mind:
- Unstressed syllables need to be lower. The second syllable of “people”, “looking”, should be lower vowels, not the high mid vowel of NAE.
- Reducing function words that are different from NAE in the grammar of the dialect, e.g. “Me didn’t have no chance”
- The increased tension of /i/, /o/, and /u/ takes a lot of concentration to maintain.
For my next post I’ll be focusing on pulling all of these skills together on the archetype.
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