Ontario 30

Listen to Ontario 30, a 35-year-old man from Newmarket and Bracebridge, Ontario, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 35

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1973

PLACE OF BIRTH: Newmarket, Ontario, Canada

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: GIS technician

EDUCATION: bachelor’s degree

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

The subject lived in Bracebridge and Burlington for extended periods. He was living in Bradford, 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): 30/11/2008

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

Uh, today I was curling, at 10 o’clock on a Sunday, which is way too early on a Sunday morning to be curling.  It’s a Sunday Sinner’s League, which is more of a fun league than a competitive league.  And I curl vice, and, uh, we won the game, but, uh, I found myself not sure what I was, how I was going to call the game.  And when I eventually did make a call, my sweepers didn’t listen to me, and as a consequence, we did not, uh, make that shot.  But we still won the game.  The thing with the Sunday Sinner’s League is that once a week, one team makes lunch.  So it wasn’t our turn this time, uh, but we had, uh, Caesar salad and chili, which someone told me wasn’t spicy, but when I took a mouthful of it, I found it was very spicy.  Um, then we discussed what we were going to do for out lunch, but it’s not for a few months, so we just talked about it, and we’ll decide later.  There are eight teams, eight teams per two weeks.  So we actually have two leagues, and we curl every other week, except when there’s a bonspeil.  And, uh, we’ll be finished, eh, beginning of April.  Skips are the, the big boss; vices … kind of, yeah, do everything: We have to throw the rock; we have to sweep the rock; we have to hold the broom and try to make some calls when the skip is throwing his or her rocks.  So it’s an opportunity for me to practice vise-ing, to get into the, uh, mentality of the game, and the strategy.  Otherwise I simply a, a lead or a second, and concern myself with throwing rocks, and, uh, judging weight, and when to sweep.  So it’s a little more, uh, interesting, a little more complicated.  And it didn’t make matters any easier that there was myself, who was trying to decide what to call, our skip, and our spare, who was also a skip, who was trying to call his own rocks.  So, uh, with a lot of the shots, it was “Yes, sweep!” “No, don’t sweep!”  “Yes, sweep!” “No, don’t sweep!” uh, which is all very confusing when you’re trying to decide whether or not to sweep.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/11/2008

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 is quite open (e.g., “dress, vet”).  He is a very good example of “Canadian raising,” where both the PRICE and MOUTH lexical sets raise before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “price” but not “pride,” “mouth” but not “around”). The GOAT lexical set is unrounded, with the sound moving closer to [ɛʊ].  His /s/ is very low and is articulated with the middle of his tongue (rather than the tip) when followed by a vowel (e.g., “Sarah”), but is articulated with the tip when followed by an alveolar consonant (e.g., “strong”).  Final stop consonants are often co-articulated with a glottal, especially when followed by a word beginning with a vowel (e.g., “that once a week…” in unscripted speech). 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 30 is featured as sample number 30 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 30/11/2008

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