Ontario 21

Listen to Ontario 21, a 44-year-old woman from Sault Ste. Marie and Oakville, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 44

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1964

PLACE OF BIRTH: Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: risk-management coordinator

EDUCATION: university degree

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

The subject lived in Oakville and Burlington, Ontario, as well as in Dauphin and Winnipeg, in Manitoba, for extended periods.

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): 24/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

When I was a little girl, I had an imaginary friend, and his name was Sam.  And it really bothered my parents that I was talking to this imaginary person.  And, um, when things would go missing around the house, and obviously I took them, but I would blame it on Sam.  So it drove my parents right around the bend.  And, um, back then, they didn’t know how to handle that sort of thing, and, um, it’s kind of mean, but in the end, what happened to Sam, and how they got rid of Sam, was they took us out in a rowboat.  I used to go fishing with my Dad all the time, on Lake Superior.  And, uh, we went out in the boat, and my Dad threw Sam overboard, and that was the end of Sam.  And to this day, my sisters think that was extremely cruel, that child psychologists would never, um, advise a parent to do that.  But it worked; it did get rid of Sam, and, um, I don’t know if I have any lasting mental effects because of that, but, um, I think that was the end of it.  Sam really did stop taking things, ’cause he was gone.  I don’t know, I was about, probably about 5, maybe, or 4 or 5.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The PRICE and CHOICE lexical sets have emphasis on the second sound of the diphthong. The FACE lexical set, on the other hand, elongates the first sound of the diphthong. The TRAP lexical set often has nasalization, and is more open than other Ontario samples. Final consonants are often aspirated, including consonants that aren’t generally aspirated (e.g., “bend”). The MOUTH lexical set undergoes “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “out in the boat” in the unscripted speech). 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 21 is featured as sample number 21 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 24/11/2008

The archive provides:

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• 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).

 

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