Nova Scotia One - Text
Subject is white male, born in 1944, university educated, after working 20 years in the field of recreation is now working as a security/access coordinator. Born and raised in Halifax, Nova Scotia. After graduating from university with a teaching degree he worked for 4 years in Bridgewater, Nova Scotia (60 miles outside of Halifax) before returning to Halifax. He is the brother of Nova Scotia2 and the father of Nova Scotia3. Recorded November 14, 1999 by Susan Stackhouse and edited by Paul Meier 02/05/00. Of interest is the lack of breath support, the pronunciation of the word 'miracle' as 'mericle' and the strong 'r' coloring obvious in the words 'there' and 'earth'. There is a strong example of Canadian Raising (mid central starting point when the following consonant is voiceless) with the words 'white light', 'nightly', 'life', 'prime', 'quite' and the closed 'a' and strong 'r' used for words 'grade', 'strange',' marks', and 'part-time'. Running time 00:03:20.
TRANSCRIPT OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
After my naïve childhood, as far as, um, the opposite sex goes, we, um, sports took up most of my life and, uh, and, uh, played a number of them, not that successfully but, uh, quite a few, quite a few sports I’ve been involved in. And then, uh, one day the-the famous four that I’ve already mentioned, uh, we-we played bridge, and of course that again in those days was something that seventeen and eighteen-year-old boys didn’t do very often, so people probably thought we were quite strange. We’d have all-night bridge games and, uh, at one of those bridge games, my friend, who was quite intelligent, um, who made very high marks in school and-and, uh, finished university at a young age, decided that because I was pretty good in bridge that I should also go to university. ‘Cause up until that time I had not done very well in school. So about four o’clock in the morning, one morning after about four hours of discussion he convinced me that I was a prime candidate for university. So there I was with my grade eleven, um, partial and had to come up with, uh, two-and-a-half subjects in grade eleven to continue on to go to university. So I worked at part-time jobs and full-time jobs and studied for about a year to get my, what they called in those days, Provincial Examinations. So I wrote the Provincial Examinations, then did pass them and the marks weren’t too bad, so I went on to university. And there I spent probably eight years to get five years so I still wasn’t a great student but I did, uh, manage to get that. . .that, uh, degree and also the--, an education degree as well. And went on to teach for four years. I went to New Germany, Nova Scotia where I had an opportunity to teach right out of university and, uh, spent four years there on the Bridgewater/New Germany area and, uh, it was a good experience but I-I was afraid I, I’m afraid I was a-a Halifax born and bred person and couldn’t really live in the country , especially without a family or anything to settle down. So I eventually left there and came to Halifax, back to Halifax and, uh, worked in the area of recreation in Sackville, which is a community just outside of Halifax, about ten kilometers. And, uh, that’s where I worked for twenty years.
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY LYNN BAKER, 6 AUGUST, 2008