Ontario 33

Listen to Ontario 33, a 45-year-old woman from Ottawa and Windsor, Ontario, and also British Columbia, Canada. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 45

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1963

PLACE OF BIRTH: Red Deer, Alberta, Canada

GENDER: female

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: university professor

EDUCATION: master’s degree

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

Although born in Alberta, the subject was raised in Ottawa, Ontario. She also lived in Windsor and Toronto; in Nelson and Victoria, British Columbia; and in Pontedera in Italy.

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

She taught English in Italy with a British accent. She had severe hearing loss as a child, and subsequently learned how to speak as a deaf person.

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): 27/01/2009

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

So, when I was a baby, I, uh, had chronic ear infections, and, uh, was very, very ill in the first year of my life, and I cried and cried and cried, and screamed and screamed and screamed, and my whole family was completely fed up with this screaming baby.  Um, my mother took me to numerous doctors, um, who tested my ears and so on, and they kept putting me on antibiotics, which, uh, are of a family called the gent-, gentamicin family of antibiotics, which is also called “ear poison.”  And these are commonly prescribed antibiotics that damage the auditory nerve of the ear and cause permanent hearing loss.  So, uh, while I had perfect hearing, uh, at the beginning of my life, I ended up with, uh, severe hearing loss as a child.  Um, then I, um, got over all these ear infections, and began to get healthier, and, uh, went through my life until the age of 25 living in a world of silence, and went through my undergraduate degree in theatre as a deaf person, but a deaf person in denial, so I never let anybody know that I was deaf, and I completely faked it: reading lips, reading bodies, reading situations.  Um, it wasn’t until I graduated from undergraduate, uh, degree that I hit the wall, um, and realized that I was missing more than I was hearing, and struggling too much, and so I finally accepted the fact that I was deaf, and, uh, got hearing aids for the first time at the age of 25, and, uh, went through a huge, uh, shifting of how I heard, because my old skill set was no longer necessary, and I had to develop new skill sets. Uh, so, uh, it was a process of, uh, my brain re-mapping, which is called, uh, neuroplasticity, and, uh, developing, uh, a more, uh, softer way of hearing, being, not having to work so hard to hear.

TRANSCRIBED BY: John Fleming

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/01/2009

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

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

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

The PRICE lexical set undergoes “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “price” but not “pride”). The MOUTH lexical set also undergoes “Canadian raising” before a voiceless consonant, but not before a voiced consonant (e.g., “mouth” but not “around”). The DRESS lexical set is very open, sounding quite close to [æ] (e.g., “dress, vet”). Unlike most other Ontario samples, “Duke” is pronounced with a liquid /u/. “Tune,” however, is not. Her /s/ is quite high, and very breathy. Her /t/ sounds (especially final /t/) are almost always aspirated, and are rarely replaced or co-articulated. 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 33 is featured as sample number 33 on that page.

COMMENTARY BY: John Fleming

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 27/01/2009

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.