Manitoba 2

Listen to Manitoba 2, a 27-year-old woman from Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 27

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 22/05/1986

PLACE OF BIRTH: Winnipeg

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian/Polish

OCCUPATION: actor

EDUCATION: university

AREAS OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject has also lived in Etobicoke and Toronto, Ontario.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has had voice training, both singing and speech.

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

RECORDED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2013

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY):

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I do, I have many pets. So, I had, I’ve had eight birds. I got my first bird when I was 10. And, uh, now I’m on, the seventh and the eighth bird. My last two lived for ten years, so I’m proud of that. [laughs] And the first few died pretty quickly, but I think that was because I didn’t know how to take care of them properly, so now I have my two, and I hope they stay with me for a long time, too. And I also had dogs. So I had two Labs.

I’m at the back of my throat, and it’s like North Dakota. It’s very back here, and that’s probably — they thought that was the cause of why my nodes, and because I force my speech. I don’t just let it flow. So, but it just kept getting worse and worse, the more I get, like, heckled for it, so, and that and, uh, my L’s are far back, and I go “ooooh” all the time, and if I want to do film and television, no one’s going to hire an American actor that goes, “Oooh, my God” all the time, so that type of stuff.

As, yeah, as me I do, and I don’t even notice it, but as soon as I pick up a script, it’s like I hear my, my, my teacher’s, mm, like, voice in the back of my head and I go “oh.” Like I try to … but then I feel like I’m also forcing. So in scripts, I feel like … it’s just ver- I’m just very self-conscious about it, which doesn’t help with acting. So I, it’s uh, been, uh, almost six months now, so I’m trying to get out of that.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 11/11/2014

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Note the heavy rhotic ‘r’ sounds at the end of syllables, heard in Comma Gets a Cure in “work, north square, near,” etc., and in the unscripted speech in “birds, here,” etc.

The subject has “Canadian Raising” on the [aɪ] and [aʊ] diphthongs: When followed by a voiceless consonant, those two diphthongs are “raised” to [ʌɪ] and [ɛʊ], respectively. Listen for the [aɪ] shift in Comma in “…more to her liking” and when you compare the two words “right side.” You can hear the [aʊ] shift in Comma with “mouth” and “measure out,” where “out” pushes even further, almost to [ʊ], and in the unscripted speech with “get out of that.”

The [oʊ] diphthong is monophthongized (merged down to one sound). You can hear the [o] in Comma in “stroked” and in the unscripted speech as she talks about “North Dakota, notice” and the back of her “throat.” Note that this doesn’t always shift completely – hear “flow” in the unscripted speech.

The [eɪ] is also monophthongized, but to a lesser degree than [oʊ]. You can hear the [eɪ] change in “face, made” in Comma.

The [u] phoneme has markedly more lip rounding, heard in Comma Gets a Cure with the many instances of “goose” and in the unscripted speech in “do, soon.”

Final [t] sounds are often glotallized or dropped.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 14/08/2014

The archive provides:

• Recordings of accent/dialect speakers from the region you select.

• 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).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.