Ontario Twenty-five - Text
The features of the dialect of mainstream English speakers in Ontario can be heard at Professor Eric Armstrong's website. Ontario 25 is featured as sample number 25 on that page.]
The subject is a Caucasian female, born in 1963, and was 45 at the time of recording. She is a Health Promoter, and has an undergraduate university degree. She was born in Scarborough, Ontario, raised in Richmond Hill, Ontario, and has lived in London, Ontario, Hamilton, and Toronto for extended periods of time.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I remember as a child, (uh) every summer, our family would take a two week vacation period. And we would hop in the car and drive somewhere. (uh) It was always somewhere far, so we’d be in the car for a quite hours. And at the time, we had a 1973 pala… Chevy Impala station wagon, so I’m really aging myself now. And, (um) they used to make station wagons back then that were huge; it had, like, a 350 engine, eight cylinder… thing could motor. Anyways, (uh) the back was quite large, and it would open up, and there was a compartment underneath that you could store all of your luggage, so everything went underneath, and then the cover would go on top, and my sister and I were able to lay down, in the back, and sleep. So it was great, because it was large enough for two of us – we’re kids – and my mom would have, you know, all the blankets and pillows and everything there, and she’d pack a lunch, and snacks, and we actually spent most of the time sleeping throughout the trips. But (uh) I remember that very well. And I remember once we were in the States, somewhere; I can’t remember where – I think we were coming up from South Carolina, and we were on fumes, and my mother was having a fit on my dad, and my dad – was an, an engineer; he’s passed away now – but I remember him actually putting the car into neutral, to get it to coast down the hills, and back up, until he needed to put it back into drive, and use the gas again. So, (uh) I just remember, I don’t know why I remember that, but I do remember that. I think, probably, because I was a bit traumatised, thinking we were going out end up out in the middle of nowhere, in the States, and my mother was having a fit, so. We had lots of fun taking those trips every summer.
Final plosive consonants are almost never released. The trap/bath lexical set has nasalization, and is quite open, as heard in “bath” in Comma Gets a Cure and “back” in the unscripted speech. The mouth and price lexical sets undergo "Canadian Raising" before a voiceless consonant, but not before a voiced consonant (e.g. "mouth" but not "around", “price” but not “pride”). She is a good example of this characteristic, particularly the mouth change. In her diphthongs, the sound changes quite quickly; the majority of the sound is on the secondary vowel, heard especially on the r-colored diphthongs. The lot lexical set has very little lip rounding, resulting sometimes in [a]. Hear “odd” in Comma Gets a Cure.
SAMPLE RECORDED, SPEECH TRANSCRIBED, AND NOTES WRITTEN BY JOHN FLEMING ON November 24, 2008.