Saskatchewan 1

Listen to Saskatchewan 1, a 60-year-old woman from Wolseley, Saskatchewan, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 60

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1940

PLACE OF BIRTH: Wolseley, Saskatchewan, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: homemaker

EDUCATION: high school

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

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Susan Stackhouse

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/05/2000

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Yes, this house belonged to my aunt and uncle.  And, um, we nowadays would refer to it as a two bed, three-bedroom, I guess, home.  And they raised two boy and three girls, and themselves lived in this house.  And, um, it was a wonderful. I, I thought it was quite a big house when I was a child and came here.  And the kitchen had a wonderful cook stove which we still have in use and, uh, they had a piano that was always had music going at it and, uh, lots of company and lots of rich ice cream and, uh, homemade pies.  And, um, a thing that, in the prairies, we called a dumbwaiter, and, uh, there was a hole in the floor — cut in the floor — and a cupboard went down into the basement to keep things cool.  And there was a ring on this cupboard, and you pulled the ring and up came the cupboard.  And, uh, in this home, my aunt was a meticulous homemaker.  And this cupboard was always, uh, covered with screening so nothing could get into it.  But when she would pull it up out of the floor, I always thought that there were some people down [unclear] in the basement making all these things [laughs]because each shelf would have pies or cakes or something delicious on it that she would be more than willing to share. [laughs] And, uh, so when we purchased this home and moved it here, I wanted to keep the dumbwaiter down working.  However, that was not to be.  So we don’t have dumbwaiter now.  Well, we’re sitting — [unclear] we’re looking at Qu-Appelle Valley, which, uh, my grandparents — great-grandparents — came to in 1882.  And they walked from Brandon to here with an ox-cart, and they settled in this area and raised a large family.  And some of their family still live here.  The Qu-Appelle Valley was formed by glacier action, and the Qu-Appelle River runs through it, which was used as a trade route for the, uh, natives to take their furs to Fort Qu-Appelle, which is approximately an hour west of here, although considerably longer when you were traveling by water on the river, as the Qu-Appelle River has many bends and twists in it.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Wright

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 15/05/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Subject is married, a mother of three grown children and grandmother of eleven. In her sound, there is muscular tension of the larynx. It may be confused with nasalization but is actually throat tension. The pitch, as in all five samples from Saskatchewan, is low and the range narrow. This subject was born, raised and is presently living in rural Saskatchewan; however, she has traveled a great deal, and perhaps this is why her speech is so articulated. Unlike many Canadians, she ensures that the h is present when pronouncing the [wh] in “which,” “when” and “white.” In addition, this speaker avoids the [d] tapping that is typical in Canadian speech and ensures that all medial [t]s are sounded. Examples of this can be found in water, beautiful, at it, settled. One can detect the Canadian Raising (mid-central starting point when the following consonant is voiceless) in the words “house,” “down,” and “white light”; however, it is not as evident as in the speech of Eastern Canadians. The [r] is quite strong. Note the pronunciation of the words “route” (out) instead of (oot) and “aunt” (ant) instead of (ont).

COMMENTARY BY: Susan Stackhouse

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 07/05/2000

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).

For instructional materials or coaching in the accents and dialects represented here, please go to Other Dialect Services.