Ontario 25

Listen to Ontario 25, a 45-year-old woman from Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 45

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1963

PLACE OF BIRTH: Scarborough, Ontario, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: health promoter

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

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

The subject was raised in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and has lived in London, Ontario; Hamilton; and Toronto for extended periods of time.

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:

I remember as a child, uh, every summer, our family would take a two-week vacation period.  And we would hop in the car and drive somewhere.  Uh, it was always somewhere far, so we’d be in the car for a quite hours.  And at the time, we had a 1973 pala… Chevy Impala station wagon, so I’m really aging myself now.  And, um, they used to make station wagons back then that were huge; it had, like, a 350 engine, eight cylinder; thing could motor.  Anyways, uh, the back was quite large, and it would open up, and there was a compartment underneath that you could store all of your luggage, so everything went underneath, and then the cover would go on top, and my sister and I were able to lay down, in the back, and sleep.  So it was great, because it was large enough for two of us – we’re kids – and my mom would have, you know, all the blankets and pillows and everything there, and she’d pack a lunch, and snacks, and we actually spent most of the time sleeping throughout the trips.  But, uh, I remember that very well.  And I remember once we were in the States, somewhere; I can’t remember where – I think we were coming up from South Carolina, and we were on fumes, and my mother was having a fit on my dad, and my dad – was an, an engineer; he’s passed away now – but I remember him actually putting the car into neutral, to get it to coast down the hills, and back up, until he needed to put it back into drive, and use the gas again.  So, uh, I just remember, I don’t know why I remember that, but I do remember that.  I think, probably, because I was a bit traumatised, thinking we were going out end up out in the middle of nowhere, in the States, and my mother was having a fit, so, we had lots of fun taking those trips every summer.

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:

Final plosive consonants are almost never released. The TRAP/BATH lexical set has nasalization, and is quite open, as heard in “bath” in “Comma Gets a Cure” and “back” in the unscripted speech. The MOUTH and PRICE lexical sets undergo “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “mouth” but not “around,” “price” but not “pride”). She is a good example of this characteristic, particularly the “mouth” change. In her diphthongs, the sound changes quite quickly; the majority of the sound is on the secondary vowel, heard especially on the r-colored diphthongs. The LOT lexical set has very little lip rounding, resulting sometimes in [a]. Hear “odd” in Comma Gets a Cure. 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 25 is featured as sample number 25 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

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

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).

 

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