Prince Edward Island Two - Text
Subject is a white female, born in 1958. Born and raised in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada. High School education. Married, with an adult daughter and three grandchildren. Presently employed as a housekeeper/cleaner of cottages. Has lived on the Island her entire life. Recorded on June 25, 2000 by Susan Stackhouse. Another wonderful example of Canadian Maritime speech. The speedy delivery and rising intonation are both prominent. The teeth are hardly parting and the jaw is tight. This speaker lacks breath support and has a tendency to run words together (final consonants are not always evident). There is a sense that the speaker is taking a short cut by leaving out words as in 'you gotta have', 'far as I know', 'beach is just everything'. Pronouns (I and my) are often omitted as in 'married', 'grandparents . . .', 'lived there most of my ilfe', etc. The [g]'s are dropped from [ing] endings as in fishin. The vowel [o] in 'lobster', 'lotta', 'you gotta', 'pot of gold', 'gods' moves closer to an [ah] sound, as does the vowel in daughter. Canadian Raising is evident in 'white light', 'life', 'like', 'lighthouse', 'Rice Point', 'around', however it is not as strong as in the speech of Prince Edward Island, Subject #1. Recorded and edited 6.25.00 by Susan Stackhouse. Further editing by Paul Meier 9.21.00. Running time: 00:02:48.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Charlottetown, PEI. I lived in the main street. It’s called University Avenue. At that time, it was Elm Avenue. (Um) Lived there most of my life. Then I just moved around town. Not much of a mover. (Laughs) I don’t like to move. (Um) Married, have one daughter, three grandchildren, all daughters, all granddaughters. And married almost 24 years. Everyone’s from the islands. Yeah, as far as I know, they’re all from PEI, in one area or the other. Grandparents are from—from Charlottetown. My—my mother’s side. My father’s side, they—they were from Rice Point. They lived in Rice Point for a lot of years and then they moved to Charlottetown, too. And Rice Point’s out toward (unclear) Rocky Point—out that way. We used to go on—on (uh) picnics at the beach when we were little. When we had a birthday, Mom was in the summer, my sister’s first (unclear), so we always had them at the beach. (unclear), they always used to have sack races and three-legged races and all that kind of thing. It was a great time at the beach. Beach is just everything here. It’s just the center of everything. And I would play base and hit. It’s (uh) called singing sands and you walk along the beach. It sounds like music. Up in—it’s in East Point. It’s beautiful up there. Near (unclear) the East Point lighthouse. It’s nice. You going (unclear) to see that? (Uh) There’s lots—lots of fishing boats around. Watchcomb (unclear) and Palwer (unclear). Just—that’s where I’m fishing. (Laughs) Lobster. (Laughs) I hate having seafood (unclear) but no potatoes. When they first come out of the ground—just the little ones—they’re the best. They’re the best. Oh, yes, you got to have new PEI potatoes. (unclear) you just have to. There’s one expression I heard and it’s like, this is a one-armed paper-hanger, which I’ve never heard before and—and that’s—it’s just an island saying but I had never heard it until one of the girls I worked with said it. And all I could do was laugh. I was like, a what? A one-armed paper-hanger, that’s how busy I am. I said, okay. (Laughs)
UNSCRIPTED SPEECH TRANSCRIBED BY JOHN WRIGHT 15 MAY, 2008