Ontario 13

Listen to Ontario 13, a 37-year-old woman from St. Thomas and Burlington, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 37

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1971

PLACE OF BIRTH: St. Thomas, Ontario

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: provincial-offenses officer

EDUCATION: some university education, with several college programs

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

She had been living in Burlington, Ontario, for 10 years at the time of the recording.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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): 12/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Uh, well, last summer, I decided that I wanted to go to moto-cross camp.  It wasn’t, like, really, that I just decided then; it’s that I’d always loved Evel Knievel, ever since I was little, and it was kind of like my dream; I wanted to be like Evel Knievel and jump over things and that.  So I was telling my friend, who happened to be, her (bor) her brother was in moto-cross, and he knew of a school, and so she forwarded me the link, and I felt like I had to, since I really didn’t have any excuse, go and attend it.  So I signed up for a week, and when I called the woman, she was like, “OK, what’s your experience riding motor bikes?” And I said, “Um, I don’t have any.” She’s like, “Oh, oh. And, uh, how old are you?” And I said “Um, I’m 30.” Well, I guess I was 36 then.  So, she was again like, “Um, oh.” So I had to be in a class with all little kids, because people don’t really, like, as adults, suddenly decide they want to jump dirt bikes, so all the kids in my class, there was one, she was, I think, 4 years old, there was a 6-year-old, um, an 8-year-old, and the oldest one was 11.  So even the 11-year-old, I pretty much was able to kick her ass too, because my bike was bigger.  And, the, one of the nicest parts was that because they were all so small, they couldn’t do the same stuff that I could, cause I just had the physical strength of being bigger.  So when we were learning to do wheelies and that, they just couldn’t do them, ’cause they couldn’t pull the bikes up, so they were all like standing on the edge, like cheering me when I was trying, and like, “Keep going! You can do it! You can do it!”  And so eventually I did do it, and then I pelted like over my handlebars and crashed onto the ground.  So, yes, that was my successful motorbike experience.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Initial and medial [k] consonants release from quite far back on the soft palate. The r-coloring, especially on [ɜ˞] and r-colored diphthongs ending with [ɜ˞], are very far back, perhaps with a retracted tongue. The dress lexical set is quite open.  The PRICE and MOUTH lexical sets undergo “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant, but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “price” [əɪ̝]  but not “pride” [aɪ]). (The features of the dialect of mainstream English speakers in Ontario can be heard at Professor Eric Armstrong’s website. Ontario 13 is featured as sample number 13 on that page.)

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 12/11/2008

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• Scholarly commentary and analysis in some cases.
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