Alberta 3

Listen to Alberta 3, a 44-year-old woman from Spruce Grove and Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 44

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1963

PLACE OF BIRTH: Spruce Grove, Alberta, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: White/Canadian

OCCUPATION: actor

EDUCATION: graduate degree

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

The subject has spent one year in Washington, D.C., in the United States, and also indicates time spent in Edmonton, AB; Toronto, ON; Vancouver, BC; and Saskatchewan. Other than her time in Washington, D.C., the subject has lived in Canada her entire life.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH: N/A

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

RECORDED BY: Joseph Papke

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/05/2007

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’m from a little town, uh, not so little now, but in my time it was a, a little town about thirty miles west of Edmonton, Alberta, which is if you were to go straight north from Missoula, Montana, you would sort of hit Edmonton, kind of. And, uh, so that’s where I’m from a farming community called Spruce Grove. But I spent a lot of time in the city of Edmonton. Spent a little time in Toronto and a little time in Vancouver, and I’ve done shows in Winnipeg, uh, Saskatoon, Regina; those are in Saskatchewan. And, uh, I’ve done shows in Quebec. And I think that’s about as far east as I’ve been; ahh been to Halifax, been to Halifax. We had one horse that didn’t belong to us. It was my cousin’s; he never rode it, but it lived on our farm. Plenty of dogs. Dogs would arrive unannounced I don’t know where they came from. People would drop their animals off in the country if they didn’t want them anymore, and us being the saps that we were would take them in. I remember, uh, winter was always lots of fun because dad would plow our long driveway, so we had a huge hill of snow that we could toboggan down. Well, we’re on a long country road so you had to walk, um, a fair distance — our nearest neighbors were like a five minute walk and those were the Van Leets, and I — it was great because they — in their barn they had a rope, uh, with a pulley that went along the top of the barn so you could go up in the haystack and swing down on the rope and it would swing all the way to the end of, end of the barn; it was a long ride. It was a lot of fun, lot of fun. And they had horses that we could ride. Umm, it’s fantastic, you know. You don’t know a country unless you live in it for a little while. You can visit it and go, “Ooh yeah, I know America,” but I don’t — didn’t know America. I know it a little bit better now.

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

Of interest:
– Very Canadian pronunciation of “about” [ʌʊ], also found in “out” and to a lesser extent in “mouth and “now”
– Very Canadian pronunciation of “sorry” [ɔ] – Pronunciations of “Toronto” and “Quebec”
– Rounded [ɒ] in “Montana” “drop” “lots/lot” “top”
– [æ] towards [a] shift in “jacket” “trap” “bath” “Halifax” “fantastic”

COMMENTARY BY: Joseph Papke

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 08/05/2007

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.