[Vocabulary] What does the girl say?

[englishhobby]

I can't hear properly what the girl says about the place she lives in (at 40 seconds and on).
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QCPW03lVHa4&feature=player_detailpage#t=40

So now I am a nineteenyear old and I live in Canada and ....???? .... Massasauga which is a small kind of .....???

 

[nunbird]

Hello englishhobby,

I'm neither an English teacher nor a native speaker, but here is my guess:

"... I live in Canada in Ontario, in Mississauga (Massassauga does seem to exist, but it's a bit too far away in the North), which is a small kind of - well not that small - but it's a suburban area that's like ten minutes from Toronto, so it's kind of like a fifteen-minute drive for me to get to Toronto from my house."

I hope it helps.

 

[emsr2d2]

Hello englishhobby,

I'm neither an English teacher nor a native speaker, but here is my guess:

"... I live in Canada in Ontario, in Mississauga (Massassauga does seem to exist, but it's a bit too far away in the North), which is a small kind of - well not that small - but it's a suburban area that's like ten minutes from Toronto, so it's kind of like a fifteen-minute drive for me to get to Toronto from my house."

I hope it helps.

You've done a great job there nunbird. Word perfect! Bless her, she's not doing the blondes of the world any favours with the claim that she lives in a town that's ten minutes from Toronto yet it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto. ;-)

 

[SoothingDave]

You've done a great job there nunbird. Word perfect! Bless her, she's not doing the blondes of the world any favours with the claim that she lives in a town that's ten minutes from Toronto yet it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto. ;-)

Traffic?

 

[emsr2d2]

Traffic?

Well, yes, but if it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto on a regular basis, it would make sense for her to describe her town as "a fifteen-minute drive from Toronto" and not mention "ten minutes" at all.

 

[probus]

According to The Economist, Toronto is the fifth largest urban agglomeration in North America after Mexico City, New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. It has more than five million inhabitants. The city proper has 2.5 million and Mississauga, its most populous suburb, has more than 700,000. When the speaker in the OP says that it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto, she can only mean from her particular location in Mississauga to the periphery of the city proper. The hundreds of thousands who commute from the western suburbs like Mississauga to jobs downtown require at least an hour for each journey, regardless of means of transit. And it often takes hours to travel from anywhere to anywhere in the greater Toronto area, regardless of the time of day or day of the week. It's just like any other city of five million plus: a mess. I know: I live there.

 

[englishhobby]

You've done a great job there nunbird. Word perfect! Bless her, she's not doing the blondes of the world any favours with the claim that she lives in a town that's ten minutes from Toronto yet it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto. ;-)

Well, yes, but if it takes her fifteen minutes to get to Toronto on a regular basis, it would make sense for her to describe her town as "a fifteen-minute drive from Toronto" and not mention "ten minutes" at all.

I think that's OK - the suburban area itself is ten minutes from Toronto, while her house is fifteen minutes from it, I think, it's because she doesn't live right on the boundary. (Is the difference in five minutes so important anyway? If she had said "it's about ten- or fifteen-minute drive from Toronto" would it be o.k.?)