Saskatchewan 2

Listen to Saskatchewan 2, a 36-year-old man from Wolseley, Saskatchewan, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 36

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1964

PLACE OF BIRTH: Wolseley, Saskatchewan, Canada

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: general manager of a manufacturing and retail business

EDUCATION: one year of university

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

The subject lived one year in Ontario.

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:

Um, the house, yes.  Where do we start?  It was a two-story brick house that, uh, an older couple had lived in their entire life, and we moved in and wanted to make a few changes, to say the least.  Uh, we gutted out the entire main floor.  New walls, new, uh, crown moldings, uh, besides all the paint and wallpaper, and etcetera.  And, uh, we’re still working on it, but one bedroom to go, I think, is — and then we’ll start all over again, but.  We have a nice old barn in our back yard there, as you can see [unclear], [laughs] that the wife wants to tear down, but we have nothing to replace it with, so until the garage gets built, it’s staying.  And, uh, and a big yard for the kids to play in, so that’s one of the big pluses of the thing, but we haven’t done too much work in the yard yet.  No time, no money.  Oh, my goodness.  [laughs] I still have friends in Toronto, so, uh, from my university days.  But, uh, our lives are quite different.  Uh, theirs seem very preoccupied with their jobs and careers.  And, and I know it seems like we are but, but we got a … seems to me we have a whole other life going on, where they are very — they seem to be very structured in their — because, maybe, of where they live and how they have to get to work and things like that.  But they seem to have to be, like you say, up at five-thirty.  You’re there at this time, at the day care at this time, where we have a more relaxed, I think, lifestyle that way where —maybe that’s our own situation but, uh, a little bit more relaxed and down to earth.

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 the son of Saskatchewan 1. He is married and the father of three young children. He is soft spoken, with the low pitch and narrow range that is characteristic of this area. There is also a lack of breath support. Of interest is the pronunciation of the word garage (as in “cat” as opposed to “cot”) and the typically Canadian use of “are” for “our.” Some [g]s from -ing endings are dropped, as in “goin’ on,” and the word “new” is pronounced [nju] and not [nu]. There is slight evidence of Canadian Raising (mid-central starting point when the following consonant is voiceless) in the words “high” and “white light”; however, the vowel of “house” is more open. J.C. Wells, in his book “Accents of English 3,” reports, “It is supposed to be possible to identify speakers from western Canada by their pronunciation of “slough” (large body of residual water) as [slu], as against the form [slau] used by those from central and eastern Canada.” It is of interest to note that both this speaker and Saskatchewan 1 used this pronunciation when interviewed; however, it could not be included in this edited recording.

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).

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