Ontario Twenty-seven - Text
The features of the dialect of mainstream English speakers in Ontario can be heard at Professor Eric Armstrong's website. Ontario 27 is featured as sample number 27 on that page.]
The subject is a Caucasian female, born in 1975 – 33 at the time of recording – who is an environmental specialist. She has a university degree. She was born and raised in Hamilton, Ontario, lived in Kitchener-Waterloo for several years, and now lives in the Hamilton area.
TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH
I was born in Hamilton, and was raised by a single mother growing up in the country, on well-water, in a tiny little shack of a house. And it was our well, yeah. So we lived there until I was probably ten years old, and then we moved five doors up the street to another house on Nebo Road. And I was there until probably grade seven, and then moved to a place called Stoney Creek. So, I’ve had the country experience, the suburban experience, the city experience, and now we’ve recently moved back to the country, and we’re on a well again. So now, thirty-three years later. Well, I prefer well water when it’s filtered with UV, and carbon, and reverse osmosis, and all the impurities are removed from the water. So yes, well water. Yeah, we have a whole system; we have a pump room in our basement, and we purify all the water that comes in from a fifty foot drilled well into our house. So we are self-sustaining on water, and we have our own septic bed, and it’s a very different experience from where we lived in… We lived in Oakville, and in Waterdown, and now in Dundas. So… No, we’re not off a the grid yet; we’re working on that. Yes, I know, I know. It’s on our list of things to do. It’s very financially crazy, to actually invest. And solar panels, and solar water heaters, and wind power. The average citizen, homeowner; it’s very expensive. Is it Germany, or is it Greenland, where 60% of their power is all geothermal, or their heating and cooling is geothermal? Something crazy like that. So yes, it’s on our list of things to do. So that’s our intention. We’re going to be self-sustaining in the future. Maybe twenty-five years down the road.
Medial /r/ is quite light, especially compared to final /r/ (e.g. “suffering, deserted” as compared to “tower, superb”). Her [dʒ] consonant has very little initial [d], leading a slushy sound (e.g. “job, Germany”). She co-articulates final /t/ consonants with glottal stops (e.g. “kit, and…”). 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 pronounces the diphthong in “Sarah” with a more open sound than the rest of the the square lexical set (e.g. “Sarah” as compared to “Perry, square”).
SAMPLE RECORDED, SPEECH TRANSCRIBED, AND NOTES WRITTEN BY JOHN FLEMING ON November 24, 2008.