Ontario 27

Listen to Ontario 27, a 33-year-old woman from Hamilton and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 33

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1975

PLACE OF BIRTH: Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: environmental specialist

EDUCATION: university degree

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

The subject lived in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, for several years. She was living in Dundas at the time of this interview.

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): 11/24/2008

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 Hamilton and was raised by a single mother growing up in the country, on well-water, in a tiny little shack of a house.  And it was our well, yeah.  So we lived there until I was probably 10 years old, and then we moved five doors up the street to another house on Nebo Road.   And I was there until probably grade seven, and then moved to a place called Stoney Creek.  So, I’ve had the country experience, the suburban experience, the city experience, and now we’ve recently moved back to the country, and we’re on a well again.  So now, thirty-three years later.  Well, I prefer well water when it’s filtered with UV, and carbon, and reverse osmosis, and all the impurities are removed from the water.  So yes, well water.  Yeah, we have a whole system; we have a pump room in our basement, and we purify all the water that comes in from a fifty foot drilled well into our house.  So we are self-sustaining on water, and we have our own septic bed, and it’s a very different experience from where we lived in … We lived in Oakville, and in Waterdown, and now in Dundas.  So, no, we’re not off a the grid yet; we’re working on that.  Yes, I know, I know.  It’s on our list of things to do.  It’s very financially crazy, to actually invest.  And solar panels, and solar water heaters, and wind power.  The average citizen, homeowner; it’s very expensive.  Is it Germany, or is it Greenland, where 60 percent of their power is all geothermal, or their heating and cooling is geothermal?  Something crazy like that.  So yes, it’s on our list of things to do.  So that’s our intention.  We’re going to be self-sustaining in the future.  Maybe twenty-five years down the road.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Medial /r/ is quite light, especially compared to final /r/ (e.g., “suffering, deserted” as compared to “tower, superb”).  Her [dʒ] consonant has very little initial [d], leading to a slushy sound (e.g., “job, Germany”).  She co-articulates final /t/ consonants with glottal stops (e.g., “kit, and …”).  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 pronounces the diphthong in “Sarah” with a more open sound than the rest of the square lexical set (e.g., “Sarah” as compared to “Perry, square”). 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 27 is featured as sample number 27 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

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

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