Speaking Canadian
In my time here, I have not noticed a few differences in Canadian English versus that which I know of in the states. There are three that stand out that I can remember and they are listed below. There are other smaller differences such as using British terms as opposed to US used terms. By the way, I don't like to use the term American since technically it should refer to people or things from two continents, not just the US. Anyhow, here are the three terms that jump out to me. I think there are a couple others, but I can't remember them.
About : This is probably the signature word that screams Canadian. Here they pronounce it a-boot, whereas in the US it is a-bout.
Schedule : This word is pronounced like they do in the UK. Here it is pronounced shedule. Back in the US it is skedule.
Processed cheese : When I first heard this term, I thought everyone was just being honest and calling it what it is. But recently I realized that it may also be that they don't want to (or have no reason) to call it American cheese. Also they pronounce it differently. Here it is pro-sessed cheese while in the US it is prahsessed.
Lastly, it is funny the avenues that take you to certain reaches of the web. I was looking at my sitemeter summary and saw that someone from England found my site after doing a search for "the percentage of people speaking in Montreal" on Google. I clicked on the third result and got sent to an interesting article on North American linguistics and English in Montreal. It has parallels to my recent post on demographics. It's an interesting article about the research of a professor from McGill.
2 comments:
Looks like I may have been grasping for straws on this one. Each of my examples I had heard sparingly and I was jumping to the conclusion that they were originnally inherently Canadian and that outside influences had weakened them. My recollection of Strange Brew from twenty years ago may have had an influence. So far my real life experience of anglophone Canada has not been very profound, mainly because most of my time here has been spent with the francophones.
Rachel, I'm surprisinged that I had not made the Scottish connection to aboot like I had the Irish/British connection to shedule. One word that your blog reminded me of today is that a good portion of the population here says arse instead of ass.
AJ, It was good to meet you too. It's interesting to see stuff you write, like the generational comments and the IKEA/Walmart article. I'm just wondering how you got to have knowledge of all this stuff. The Chicagoist blog also had an article about how Chicagoans speak differently than the rest of the country. Subtle, but different.
Sadia, Thank you for your comments. Since this post and the comments, I have realized that I was overstating things. They were things I noticed, but I did not realize that they applied to specific parts of the population as opposed to the overall whole. Like suggesting everyone from the US has a southern accent. I hope over the years to become more attuned to the differences (in both languages).
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