Ontario 16

Listen to Ontario 16, a 31-year-old woman from Ottawa and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 31

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1977

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ottawa, Ontario

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: teacher of the Alexander Technique

EDUCATION: university degree in music, some post-graduate work

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

The subject lived in the Winston-Salem area of North Carolina, United States, for five years. She was living in Toronto, Ontario, at the time of this 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): 17/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I don’t want to say anything too incriminating, that’s going to go on the Internet.  OK, so, um, when I was growing up, uh, my family used to go to the Sandbanks, for summer holidays.  And I remember I had never been to the ocean, but seeing Lake Ontario for the first time made a big impression on me, because it was enormous, and huge, and there were waves in it, which made it seem like the ocean to a person who had never been to the ocean.  And so, um, we used to love spending time there during the summer, and there was a really special ice cream parlor, where there was pumpkin-pie ice cream that my sister and I still talk about to this day, but it no longer exists. It’s almost mythic in our minds, but there you go.  Uh, in Pickton? Uh, which is, I guess, like Prince Edward County; it’s like halfway between Toronto and Ottawa.  Roughly, a little bit closer to Toronto.  And, uh, yeah, Pickton’s just a small little town, but there’s a provincial park in the Sandbanks, and so, um, a lot of people go there for camping; it’s like an inexpensive vacation with kids or whatever.  But there’s historic stuff, and there’s more culinary stuff in the area now, but Count Eddie’s Ice Cream Parlor is gone, unfortunately.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Medial and initial [ɹ] is much lighter than final [ɹ], the difference heard between “hurry” and “nurse.”  The DRESS lexical set is quite open.  In addition, MOUTH undergoes “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “mouth” but not “around”), but the raising is mild when compared to other Ontario recordings.  The price lexical set also undergoes “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “price” but not “pride”). The features of the dialect of mainstream English speakers in Ontario can be heard at Professor Eric Armstrong’s website (http://www.yorku.ca/earmstro/ontario/words_and_phrases.html). Ontario 16 is featured as sample number 16 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 17/11/2008

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