Ontario 28

Listen to Ontario 28, a 30-year-old woman from Brampton, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 30

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1978

PLACE OF BIRTH: Brockville, Ontario, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: health inspector for the regional government

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

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

The subject was raised in Brampton, Ontario, and lived in Toronto and in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, for several years each.

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 was born in Brockville, Ontario.  My parents, um, uh, were visiting my grandparents at the time.  We actually lived in Brampton, so I was only born in Brockville, and immediately went to Brampton, and, uh, grew up in Brampton pretty much my whole life, until I went to university.  And, so I lived in Brampton about twenty years or so, and then went to University of Waterloo, which actually looked a lot like Brampton.  Yep, well, ya, no, my mother likes to remind me, if she’s particularly pissed off, that, uh, she was in labor for about seventeen hours, and that was very difficult for her.  I have one dog named Matty.  And then I live in a condo, so it was never really my intention of getting a dog, but, uh, she belonged to my grandmother, and she passed away a couple of years ago, so I inherited little Matty, and, uh, she’s actually turned out to be quite a, quite a nice companion, and, um, she’s worked out all right in the condo.  But, uh, they’re a lot of work. [Laughs] I don’t know if I’d ever want a dog in an apartment ever again.  I’ll be glad when I, uh, finally get into a house with a backyard.

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 DRESS lexical set can be quite open (e.g., compare “dress” and “vet”). Final /t/ is rarely released. 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”). The set script of “Comma Gets a Cure” has some distinct differences from the unscripted speech. The r-colored words, especially with diphthongs, are all much farther back in her mouth in the unscripted speech (e.g., “backyard” versus “here’s, superb”). 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 28 is featured as sample number 28 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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