Ontario 24

Listen to Ontario 24, a 54-year-old woman from Kitchener and Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 54

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1954

PLACE OF BIRTH: Kitchener, Ontario

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: law clerk

EDUCATION: university degree

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

She was living in Oakville, Ontario, at the time of this recording.

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:

OK, um, I worked downtown Toronto, at, uh, a large law firm, for eight years.  And, uh, then I got a position with two of the partners at a small boutique law firm. Uh, after that time, I was fortunate to find a position here at Halton, and it’s very close to my home, so I don’t have the, uh, transportation issues that people have going downtown on the Go train, transferring to subways if necessary, and so it’s, it’s wonderful to be approximately six minutes from my home.   No, right now I’m car.  Bike if there wasn’t so much construction, or I’d take a bike.  Especially when I was going on the Go train, a lot of newspapers, I’ve gone through a lot of books, but recently I went back to school, so that’s all been set aside.

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:

She speaks generally from a placement further back in her mouth than other Ontario examples, resulting in the NORTH/FORCE diphthong sounding noticeably farther back in her mouth.  Also, because of the placement, the PALM lexical set is very far back,  especially when modified by a following dark consonant.   This sound change approaches [ɔ] (e.g., “palm”).  Most of her /l/sounds are very dark.  Both the PRICE and MOUTH lexical sets undergo “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “price” but not “pride,” “mouth” but not “around”).  The PRICE lexical-set change is quite clear in this sample.  Her medial /t/ is replaced with glottals when before a syllabic /n/ (e.g. “Halton”). (The features of the dialect of mainstream English speakers in Ontario can be heard at Professor Eric Armstrong’s website. Ontario 24 is featured as sample number 24 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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