Where does Canada's accent come from?

April 12, 2017 4:39 PM

The sound, he adds, “makes Americans’ skin crawl”.
posted by bq (201 comments total)

Hey, I am American, and I like the Canadian accent. On the other hand, I lived in Minnesota for a good long time, so I used to get accused of Canadianity when I moved elsewhere.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:02 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

The sound, he adds, “makes Americans’ skin crawl”.

Huh? Where does this come from?
posted by NoMich at 5:06 PM on April 12, 2017 [21 favorites]

That's fascinating! As a Canadian I'd love to have an accent that differentiated me from Americans (because that's something all Canadians long for) - but since I'm a western Canadian it, sadly, isn't possible. As Rogers says in the article:

But if a person travels into western Canada – into Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia – the accent becomes more American-sounding and locally indistinguishable. “The West was a melting pot for settlers from many regions, so there was this leveling out of differences, not only in Canada, but in the US,” says Boberg. “The settlement depth in Western Canada goes into the 1890s, so it is about a century old. The time depth and the population density being very sparse, those encourage widespread leveling and homogeneity.” This makes it very difficult, even for Canadians, to tell the difference between someone from Winnipeg and someone from Vancouver – or from Seattle.

Dæmnit.
posted by Kevin Street at 5:14 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Huh? Where does this come from?

I think this is specifically about the pasta, pronounced like multipass -ta vs pasta, like paws, of an animal, -ta thing, which in my experience does bug the shit out of many Americans.
posted by rodlymight at 5:15 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

The sound, he adds, “makes Americans’ skin crawl”.

Huh? Where does this come from?

Well, the pull quote is specifically about the pronunciation of "pasta" such that the first "a" is sounded as in "cat".
posted by biogeo at 5:17 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Jinx.
posted by biogeo at 5:18 PM on April 12, 2017

That's funny--to me, the "PAW-sta" pronunciation grates like nails on a chalkboard. Whenever I hear Americans pronounce it that way, for a second, I feel like they're putting on a funny accent on purpose.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:23 PM on April 12, 2017 [30 favorites]

As a native Syracusean who's lived and worked everywhere from Traverse City to New York City to Cincinnati before ending up in Pittsburgh, I now have coworkers who insist that I have a Canadian accent. To the point where today, while filling out our NHL playoffs brackets, they said my honor as a Canadian was at stake if I failed to pick the winner.

I've accepted this. Frankly, I'd rather be a full-on Canadian at this point. Give me liberty, eh?
posted by none of these will bring disaster at 5:25 PM on April 12, 2017 [15 favorites]

What is he talking about?
posted by Kabanos at 5:26 PM on April 12, 2017

Well, the pull quote is specifically about the pronunciation of "pasta" such that the first "a" is sounded as in "cat".


I think I've seen Canadian ads where they say Mazda that way too.

It's gross.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:28 PM on April 12, 2017 [10 favorites]

Canadians in Windsor pronounce the word ‘stack’ in the same way that Americans pronounce the word ‘stock’ in the neighboring US city of Detroit.

Mmm...I lived in Windsor for a number years. Not something I noticed in particular, at least with that word.

However, one local phenomenon is the pronunciation of French street names like "Pellisier" not as "pell-iss-yay," but rather "pell-isher" - even by local Francophones I knew there. The same went for many other French street names. So there's definitely a US influence.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:29 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Huh? Where does this come from?

From me.

Also, why do Canadians refer to electricity as "hydro"? And what are the four pieces of a "four-piece washroom"? Is this like the Four Freedoms? And come on, "Loblaws" cannot be a real store, that was an Arrested Development joke
posted by Automocar at 5:31 PM on April 12, 2017 [9 favorites]

Mawwwwzda. Yep. That's a thing.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:31 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

After living in Calgary for several years and then returning to the Midwest US I was regularly told I sounded like a valley girl? As in, my statements sounded like questions?
posted by waving at 5:31 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Well, the pull quote is specifically about the pronunciation of "pasta" such that the first "a" is sounded as in "cat".

I think I've seen Canadian ads where they say Mazda that way too.

It's gross.

I refuse to believe Americans pronounce it "MAWS-da." That's just...no.

[On preview: mandolin conspiracy, noooooooo!]
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 5:33 PM on April 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

...so many foreigners confuse the two when they’re travelling abroad and Canadians feel the need to attach a flag to their backpacks.

A confusion which is not helped when Americans attach Canadian flags to their backpacks to avoid being recognized as Americans.
posted by Capt. Renault at 5:33 PM on April 12, 2017 [18 favorites]

New Jerseyean by birth here. To me the a sounds in pass and cat aren't the same. And the pa in pasta sounds like pah, not paw.

Pasta with the a sound from cat doesn't bother me at all, but other people's accents typically don't bother me as a rule.
posted by defenestration at 5:33 PM on April 12, 2017

Google translate has it as closer to "Pahsta", which isn't as strong as the USian "Pawsta" but definitely not Canadian "Passta".

Back when I lived in California, a friend immediately caught my Canadian pronunciation and made fun of me, in good humour.

But for anyone interested in food and cooking, one tidbit is that pasta derives from the word paste, so I like trolling people and saying "Paste-ah" instead.
posted by polymodus at 5:34 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Also, why do Canadians refer to electricity as "hydro"?

Hydroelectric power. A lot of electric power companies have "hydro" in their names... (Ontario Hydro, now Hydro One, Toronto Hydro, etc)
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:35 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

And BC Hydro.
posted by polymodus at 5:37 PM on April 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

Hydro Quebec too.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:38 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

You don't know what gross is until you spend half a week in Pittsburgh and the other half in Fulldulfya. Ow, my poor ears. Growing up in SE PA, the accent grated on me so much that I overcorrected and now still occasionally get mistaken for Canadian.

(I don't say paaasta, but it doesn't bother me, either.)
posted by tully_monster at 5:39 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

That's funny--to me, the "PAW-sta" pronunciation grates like nails on a chalkboard.

Pretty much stopped using that word, "what's for dinner?" Spaghetti, curly spaghetti, or that tube-like spaghetti, or the very best: "wagon wheel spaghetti".
posted by sammyo at 5:39 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Google translate has it as closer to "Pahsta", which isn't as strong as the USian "Pawsta"

Uh what I have never heard an American pronounce "pasta" as anything but "pahstuh", certainly not with a "paw" sound, and I've been an American all my life
posted by Automocar at 5:39 PM on April 12, 2017 [28 favorites]

I do kind of find "passta" charming though because it reminds me of the time I spent living in England, also "tayco" for "taco"
posted by Automocar at 5:40 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

With my Thunder Bay-area inlaws, no passta or pawsta. It's all "macaroni."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:40 PM on April 12, 2017 [8 favorites]

We make fun of "pass-ta" and also "tacos" (uh, impossible to represent without IPA but the same /a/ sound as pass-ta) in my house because of my time living in England, where they do the same thing. We had to stop doing it so much because our son was learning to say it the wrong way (AND IT IS THE WRONG WAY). I mean, I am Canadian and so is my dad, but we're not monsters. It's pahsta. Short a.

"Pro-gress" and "shedule" and suchlike are the honored phonemes of my heritage, but I draw the line at that /a/ sound.
posted by soren_lorensen at 5:47 PM on April 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

The one that's getting me at the moment as a Canadian in NYC is the American pronounciation of "Basil" as "Basal". Those are just... two different words.

I never thought I had any kind of Canadian accent until I went to Europe and these Danish people I met there thought it was hilarious. "About" is a bit subtle. Say "trout" next to an American. Or the ol' "Out and about in the house". Everyone recognizes my accent when I say that.
posted by Alex404 at 5:49 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Another one that I think is very noticeable is how we Canadians say mom. It sounds much more like the British mum then it does the American way.
posted by Ashwagandha at 5:50 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Today, while filling out our NHL playoff brackets

Wait, wait, wait. You sure you're not Canadian?
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 5:53 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

The famous Canadian ou in about (and doubt, etc...) seems to be a sound Americans don't have and don't hear. It's not a long oo, never has been, not even close.

Like the US had a spectrum that didn't include indigo. They'd tease us that their colour was blue, and that we were weird for liking purple. But we don't like purple, that's only for weirdos and royalists, our favourite is indigo. But they can't understand that purple and indigo are different colours, we've had this discussion a million billion times, so we just smile and nod and grit our teeth about it. Again.

And let's not even talk about asphalt.
posted by bonehead at 5:53 PM on April 12, 2017 [15 favorites]

Another one that I think is very noticeable is how we Canadians say mom. It sounds much more like the British mum then it does the American way.

Rings true to me. The exception might be when it's spoken plaintively: "maaaaawm!"
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 5:54 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

The famous Canadian ou in about (and doubt, etc...) seems to be a sound Americans don't have and don't hear.

Mowstly don't have. It's also a feature of some Appalachian and tidewater Virginia accents.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

none of these will bring disaster: Give me liberty, eh?

Well... liberty so far as can be as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society, anyway, eh?

Peace, order and good government.
posted by clawsoon at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

The vowel I grew up using in "pasta" is more or less the same one I use in the word "hot," while the aw diphthong in "paws" is completely different. My younger kids mostly say it the UK way. I think we probably switch back and forth or aim for something in between, as a result.

To my ear, the Canadian "ou" sounds like a cross between the sounds in "boot" and "boat," but definitely neither of the two.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 5:55 PM on April 12, 2017

Northeast Ohio folks do an almost Canadian "pasta" that comes out as even more nasal, like "pehawsta."
posted by leotrotsky at 6:02 PM on April 12, 2017

Like the US had a spectrum that didn't include indigo. They'd tease us that their colour was blue, and that we were weird for liking purple. But we don't like purple, that's only for weirdos and royalists, our favourite is indigo. But they can't understand that purple and indigo are different colours, we've had this discussion a million billion times, so we just smile and nod and grit our teeth about it. Again.

I have some weirdly specific colorblindness (not really blind, deficient more like.. military used to call it "colorblind -safe" as opposed to "-unsafe") and this is actually my life. Indigo and purple are like.. different shades of the same color to me. It's weird.
posted by some loser at 6:02 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Am I the only Canadian who finds it really jarring when Americans say "beers"? To me beer was always a non-count noun, like milk.
posted by peppermind at 6:04 PM on April 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

We'll also say "milks" or "waters" if necessary.
posted by dilaudid at 6:09 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I tried but failed to find a set of paired US and Canada Mazda commercials to compare the pronunciation, but I came pretty close with this set: 1) Mazda - US, 2) Mazda - Canada.

As for "pasta", I think the Canadian pronunciation can be somewhat variable. But, I don't think anyone has quite as an extreme pronunciation of the word than the hosts of the Vancouver-based Stop Podcasting Yourself podcast. They don't have transcripts so it's hard to search for instances, but I found this episode (raw mp3 link) from 2009 where they talk a bit about Pizza Hut introducing pasta to their menu in Canada. The bit starts at 1:03:48; one of the hosts say "pasta" in his natural accent (at 1:03:52 and 1:04:33), then again in an exaggerated way in an "American accent (at 1:04:40). On the other hand, you have this Catelli pasta commercial from the 80's where the pronunciation doesn't sound so different from the American one.
posted by mhum at 6:13 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

Bit of CBC radio comedy about American spies trying to duplicate Canadian accents. How we say pasta is showcased. As well as the plural for beer, beers.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:14 PM on April 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

Am I the only Canadian who finds it really jarring when Americans say "beers"? To me beer was always a non-count noun, like milk.

So what would a waiter say to confirm an order of four beers or four glasses of milk? Four beer? Is this some weird French shit?
posted by Automocar at 6:20 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is this some weird French shit?

Hey don't blame us for that! We say beers.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:22 PM on April 12, 2017 [9 favorites]

This has me thinking about how I say words as a Canadian who grew up on the US border where we were, of course, pretty saturated with US broadcast media. The interesting thing to me, on reflection, is that in actually travelling to Michigan I'd hear pronunciations that weren't necessarily reflected in the media voices I heard from there all the time because they were sort of...flattened out in certain ways. But there are little things like this...

WKBD Detroit: December 22, 1986 where Amyre Makupson says "Holidays will be a little bit happier..."

"Hawl-idays" is how I say the word; "Hal-idays" is how I hear Amyre Makupson saying it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 6:23 PM on April 12, 2017

One other key differentiating word is "sorry". The first syllable gets pronounced more like "sore" than the American version where I think the vowel is closer to "saw". Here's a video. Sometimes I wonder if Bieber needed to do tons of takes for his song or if he just naturally pronounces it in the American way.
posted by mhum at 6:31 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I always hear a touch of Michigan/Buffalo in the vowels of people from Windsor (and the Ottawa Valley, actually) - they sound a bit flatter and wider than GTA vowels, to me.

(There are some audio examples of this supposed vowel shift phenomenon here [scroll to bottom]. I don't think I've heard it IRL, I guess it's a generational thing? I don't like it. Especially "loff", ew.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 6:33 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Huh? Where does this come from?

Seriously - as with so many other things in the US-Canada relationship, the answer south of the border is "we don't know what you're talking about and we struggle to remember that you even exist." ^*

I say this as an American fond of many Canadian things. Love you guys!
posted by ryanshepard at 6:37 PM on April 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

When my old punk band's first single was released in the early 90's one American review pointed out that my Canadian accent was so exaggerated that it must have been fake. I thought I sounded normal. Then I married a girl from the US south who had a British mother and who had been raised on military bases around the world. How her and my accents have both changed over the years has given me an appreciation of how fluid accents are.
posted by acroyear at 6:37 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Is the toilet located in the restroom, washroom, or bathroom?
posted by benzenedream at 6:41 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

When some Americans pronounce "mauve" like "mowv", like nails on a chalkboard. And it's a garbage can, not trash can, thank you very much.
posted by nanook at 6:42 PM on April 12, 2017

The Yanks joke about this "aboot" thing all the time but I'm not sure what they mean. About, out, shout, lout, doubt, gout, pout, (sometimes) route, tout, are all pronounced the same in Ontario. Is it East coasters they're making fun of?...and the wide mouthed way New York Staters call pop "soda" gets under my skin.
posted by bonobothegreat at 6:44 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can we talk about how Americans pronounce "decal", because... what. It sounds like they're saying two separate words. "Dee" "cal". It's so much easier if you rhyme it with "freckle".
posted by good in a vacuum at 6:44 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

are all pronounced the same in Ontario

Depends on where you're from in Ontario.
posted by Ashwagandha at 6:47 PM on April 12, 2017

Canadian here - I've spent my whole life consuming Buffalo TV and radio. Nothing could be worse than that nasal-heavy Western New York accent.
posted by davebush at 6:50 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

The Yanks joke about this "aboot" thing all the time but I'm not sure what they mean.

We (Canadians) do say it differently, and I think it gets more noticeable the further east you go. But it tends toward "aboat", not "aboot". I bet most just learned that from South Park or something and didn't really give it much thought or investigation. Not that I blame them.

Just listen to some CBC Radio 1 and you'll catch the odd "aboat".
posted by good in a vacuum at 6:51 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Well, the pull quote is specifically about the pronunciation of "pasta" such that the first "a" is sounded as in "cat".

Various pronunciations of pasta, Mazda (or SUbaru vs suBARu, for that matter), and most other words don't bother me at all. But the pronunciation of "taco" as "tahco/tayco" is just totally nails-on-chalkboard for me, for no real legitimate reason.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:53 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Can we talk about how Americans pronounce "decal", because... what. It sounds like they're saying two separate words. "Dee" "cal". It's so much easier if you rhyme it with "freckle".

"Decal" and "deckle" are neither synonyms nor homonyms.
posted by Dip Flash at 6:55 PM on April 12, 2017 [12 favorites]

To me beer was always a non-count noun, like milk.

"We went out for beer" seems just as fine as "We went out for beers". I've heard and used both here in Vancouver.

But I can't stand the phrase "I drank five beer last night", which I have heard many times. No, this makes as much sense as "I own two car".
posted by good in a vacuum at 6:57 PM on April 12, 2017 [10 favorites]

"Decal" and "deckle" are neither synonyms nor homonyms.

Go listen to "Be True to Your School" by The Beach Boys. This is the pronounciation and meaning of "decal" that I'm talking about.
posted by good in a vacuum at 7:00 PM on April 12, 2017

And yes, in Canada, decal and deckle are homonyms.
posted by good in a vacuum at 7:04 PM on April 12, 2017

Northeast Ohio folks do an almost Canadian "pasta" that comes out as even more nasal, like "pehawsta."

This is probably just the northern cities vowel shift...

If so, they're probably still saying "pahsta" but they say "pahsta" as "passta" or "pyassta," in the same way that NCVS-speakers say "doctor" as something pretty close to "dackter" or "dyackter." The point being that for NCVS-speakers, "pasta" has the same first vowel as "doctor." If they were saying "passta" it would be closer to "pesta" or "pyesta."

So around here "Tops Friendly Market" comes out as "Taps Friendly Mairket" or "Taps Friendly Myairket."
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 7:04 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think I've seen Canadian ads where they say Mazda that way too.

It's gross.

Quite correct. Also how it's pronounced in Japan.
posted by rodlymight at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2017

Four scores and seven beer ago...
posted by Kabanos at 7:07 PM on April 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

bonobothegreat: "The Yanks joke about this "aboot" thing all the time but I'm not sure what they mean. About, out, shout, lout, doubt, gout, pout, (sometimes) route, tout, are all pronounced the same in Ontario. Is it East coasters they're making fun of?"

I think part of it is that the Canadian vowel raising is not super consistent, neither across regions nor, if my hearing is correct, even within one person's idiolect (and, really, to my ear it's more like "a-boat" than "a-boot"). When I was growing up in Canada, I couldn't hear it at all and wondered if it was even a thing. But, since living in the US for so long, I can now hear it more clearly and have noticed that the degree of raising varies quite a bit even within one speaker. Probably the strongest, most consistent instance of the raising I've heard is Stuart McLean (RIP).

In terms of consistency and universality, I've heard that one of the sharpest linguistic markers between US and Canada is not a pronunciation thing but a vocabulary thing. Something close to 100% of Canadians and 0% of Americans would say "grade eight" instead of "eighth grade" (in reference to a particular school year) and vice versa.
posted by mhum at 7:08 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

And yes, in Canada, decal and deckle are homonyms.

What? Really?
posted by cotton dress sock at 7:11 PM on April 12, 2017

Gee, I like Canadian accents. I never find other people's accents grating. It would be so boring if everyone said everything the same way.

I'm sorry, I feel like I'm being the super chirpy person who's like "I'm not rooting for either team, as long as we all have a good time!"
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 7:13 PM on April 12, 2017 [11 favorites]

good in a vacuum: Go listen to "Be True to Your School" by The Beach Boys. This is the pronounciation and meaning of "decal" that I'm talking about.

Would just add that I'm on board with John Prine's pronunciation of "decal."
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:14 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Garsh. Deckle? Really? It's DEE-cal, because it is short for decalcomania, as my father taught me so very long ago.
posted by Mei's lost sandal at 7:20 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Tay-co is delightful! I am very amused at the thought that some people would pronounce "taco" that way :-)
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:21 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Garsh. Deckle? Really? It's DEE-cal, because it is short for decalcomania, as my father taught me so very long ago.

Interesting, I didn't know the etymology, so thank you! But looking at Wikipedia, I see that it's from the French word "décalcomanie". And I don't believe the French would pronounce the é as long "eee" sound (think of café). So I wonder if that's where Canadians got the short "eh" sound in decal.
posted by good in a vacuum at 7:26 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

pronounce "pasta" as anything but "pahstuh", certainly not with a "paw" sound

Ummm.... what did you mean to imply by the spelling "pahstuh" if not a "paw" sound? How do you pronounce "paw", if it doesn't sound the same as the first syllable of "pasta"?
posted by crotchety old git at 7:33 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Awwww != Ahhhh
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 7:36 PM on April 12, 2017 [9 favorites]

This article has been fun clickbait because of the ensuing discussion, but I have to say that this...

Since Ontarians were largely responsible for settling Western Canada in the following decades, their Americanised accent spread across the country and eventually became the de facto accent for the majority of Canadians.

...demonstrates that Thomas Rogers really didn't do even the most cursory research here about Canada. Like, none.

Just a random grab bag of things, not remotely exhaustive:

Ukranian settlement.

Mennonites: A third wave of Mennonite European immigrants to the North American prairies came from Russia and Prussia beginning in the 1870s. Leaders of these groups who settled in Manitoba and Saskatchewan founded the Conference of Mennonites in Central Canada in 1903. From the inception of this conference, there were close ties with Mennonite congregations in the United States through the General Conference Mennonite Church (GC) which was founded in 1860 and met every third year.


Métis, maybe?

First Nations languages that predate settler occupation?

Like, c'mon dude, at least try to understand your subject matter. Western Canada was not magically populated by "Ontarians" at any point.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 7:41 PM on April 12, 2017 [14 favorites]

There's a funny instance in pronunciation in woodworking... where the English and Canadians would call a groove along the corner edge of a board a rebate (ree-bate) the Americans called it a rabbet (rabbit). The English (and Canadians) always figured the Americans had bastardized it and then an English book came to light from the 1830s (re-published by Jessamyn's cousin Chris Schwarz at Lost Art Press) that specifically said that while the spelling was rebate, the pronunciation was "rabbit". It was terrible news.
posted by bonobothegreat at 7:47 PM on April 12, 2017 [7 favorites]

I am typically Canafian with my pronunctiation of Mazda and pasta and like hurt gurdy girl I don't like the American pronunciation. But where my use of the hard a sound really shines through is when I say "pyjamas" and I want to scream when someone talks about pyjah-mas
posted by biggreenplant at 7:53 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

meaning that they pronounce some two-part vowels (known as dipthongs) with a higher part of their mouths than people from other English-speaking regions – this is what causes the ‘ou’ sounds in words like ‘out’ and ‘about’ to be pronounced something like ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’.

This is bullshit. This article is drivel.
posted by My Dad at 7:58 PM on April 12, 2017

Deekal is my personal nails on a chalkboard. Dekal is the only true pronunciation. Heretics will be punished accordingly.
posted by blue_beetle at 8:02 PM on April 12, 2017

Western Canada was not magically populated by "Ontarians" at any point.

Dude. My dad was from Peterborough.
posted by sneebler at 8:09 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Western Canada was not magically populated by "Ontarians" at any point.

And Newfoundlanders.
posted by Ashwagandha at 8:15 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I spent some time recently asking an American colleague on a video call if he pronounced his name as Aaron or Erin. Polite confusion was all I got back. "You're just saying the same name twice."
posted by ~ at 8:18 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Back when I lived in California, a friend immediately caught my Canadian pronunciation and made fun of me, in good humour.

Almost every funny person in California is Canadian. If it had been an American it would they would have made fun of you in okay humor rather than good humour.
posted by srboisvert at 8:21 PM on April 12, 2017

My mom says "tack-oh" which drives me nuts. But I say pasta as per the article, so what do I know?

The "aboot" thing is wrong, though. If you slow it down, Ontarians pronounce it, "a-bay-oot". "Voucher" is another one: "vay-ooch-er". I was a BC transplant in Ontario for four years. I know pain.
posted by klanawa at 8:22 PM on April 12, 2017

What really gets on my nerves is all the attempts at phonetic spelling. Let's all learn IPA and restart the thread.
posted by eruonna at 8:23 PM on April 12, 2017 [21 favorites]

meaning that they pronounce some two-part vowels (known as dipthongs) with a higher part of their mouths than people from other English-speaking regions – this is what causes the ‘ou’ sounds in words like ‘out’ and ‘about’ to be pronounced something like ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’.

This is bullshit. This article is drivel.

I think by higher he means the vowel is more front? Which is perhaps imperfect but sort of tracks.

Although I also contest that any part of the Canadian accent is grating.

Disclaimer: I have been drinking caipirnhas while watching hockey with a bunch of Canadians all evening, so I may be slightly biased in favor of the accent at the moment (or completely misunderstanding what you meant by bullshit).
posted by ghost phoneme at 8:26 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think there is an indigo-like disconnect here with 'passta', 'pahsta', and 'pawsta'. I'm Canadian and I can't think of 3 distinct ways to pronounce this word. I pronounce it passta and have lived with Americans who pronounce it (to my ears) pawsta. I have no idea who pronounces it 'pahsta' or what that would sound like. Can anyone enlighten?
posted by skwt at 8:29 PM on April 12, 2017

So up until very recently, I thought both Americans and Brits pronounced "pasta" as "pawsta". But I've heard one or two or three or more Brits say it more or less the same way as Canadians and no Yanks seem to be writhing in agony when they do it.

Maybe it's a bit of an aural Uncanny Valley: Canadians so often sound so much like newscaster Americans that when we don't, it really throws you guys for a fucking loop.
posted by maudlin at 8:32 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

My defense of the American way of pronouncing things like Mazda and pasta is that we essentially pronounce both vowels the same. Mahzdah, pahstah, etc. In the case of Mazda, as rodlymight pointed out, Americans mirror the Japanese on that.

In practice, people are lazy, so it becomes more like Mahzduh, pahstuh. But I still think that makes slightly more sense then Mazzduh and passtuh, in which the two 'a's are given deliberately-different sounds.

I spent 20 years married to a Canadian in the US, and eventually they succumbed to American pronunciation on most things.
posted by pwinn at 8:34 PM on April 12, 2017

I'm Minnesotan and a Canadian accent always delights me. It sounds so right, right up until it's bizarrely different.
posted by beandip at 8:36 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

But I thought everyone loved hearing Canadians say "aboot!"
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:40 PM on April 12, 2017

There is certainly a great deal of chauvinism in eastern Canada. I've lived in New York on the border with Ontario for many years and now live in Vancouver. Both places have very distinct very Canadian accents. Calling the western Canadian accent more American may not be an intentional snub, but it certainly is one.

Pasta is certainly a mind bending word to hear in a Canadian accent. My personal favourite however is "process." Hearing someone from Toronto mangle pasta is funny, but you usually hear it in a casual context. Process occurs in a lot of formal settings and it is just so incredible to hear in mixed company.
posted by ethansr at 8:48 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Northeast Ohio folks do an almost Canadian "pasta" that comes out as even more nasal, like "pehawsta."

I was listening to a video the other day where the word "match" was used a lot, and the guy pronounced it as me-atch. Very nasal. I think it's the same sound you're referring to. It did seriously grate on my nerves, I must admit, and I'm Canadian!
posted by mantecol at 8:51 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I had thought that the South-Western Ontario accent was pretty flat sounding, and not too different from the basic California accent, except maybe for certain words. I'd heard that Ontario journalists could get news-casting jobs across the states because they sounded so generic overall.

Anthony Burgess wrote: A Mouthful of Air: Language and Languages, Especially English which is mostly about the sounds that different accents make from English speaking peoples around the world. And... he had virtually nothing to say about how Canadians speak. His only comment about Canada was that he liked the sound of Robertson Davies' voice.
posted by ovvl at 8:54 PM on April 12, 2017

So up until very recently, I thought both Americans and Brits pronounced "pasta" as "pawsta".

But... what? You think Brits and Americans pronounce pasta the SAME WAY? And that that way is "paw+sta"? How... how do you think "paw" is pronounced??
posted by Automocar at 8:57 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Deekal is my personal nails on a chalkboard. Dekal is the only true pronunciation. Heretics will be punished accordingly.

I pronounce it 'sticker.'
posted by Flashman at 8:58 PM on April 12, 2017 [5 favorites]

Not aboot, abeut.
posted by brujita at 9:05 PM on April 12, 2017 [4 favorites]

So I wonder if that's where Canadians got the short "eh" sound in decal.

Canadian, born and raised, can't decide whether this is a long & committed troll or whether I just haven't heard the word enough times, period, to make an informed judgement. (Deckle, really? Do you have a corroborating source? Or a story about it that I could get into?)
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:13 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

You think Brits and Americans pronounce pasta the SAME WAY?

No, I thought the pronunciation was similar (OK, "pahsta" instead of "pawsta", which is too broad) because I generally associate a broad A with most British accents, although I know that it's not used to the exclusion of the short A. As noted here, the bolded vowel sounds in "The cat sat in the bath" are typically quite different in British speech and more similar in American (and Canadian) speech.

When I actually stopped and listened to a Brit say "pasta" recently, instead of assuming something I had never previously tried to check, I realized they sound more Canadian than American in that one way. I had a little heuristic about the prevalence of the broad A in British speech, but it led me down the garden path (not pawth or pahth).

Neat little excerpt from that page:

There are no easy rules for which words fall into these two categories. For example, the word chant is pronounced with broad-a in Standard British English (IPA ɑ: or chahnt), but the word ant is pronounced with the short-a.

That is why I have watched many great American actors do flawless British accents until they they let loose an American pronunciation of last or can’t. Ouch.

So, American actor, how can you avoid being a victim of the Trap-Bath Split? Well, first things first, make sure the dialect you are doing actually has the split.

A number of British accents, contrary to popular belief, do not feature the split. And furthermore, the split is used in accents outside the United Kingdom....

posted by maudlin at 9:14 PM on April 12, 2017 [3 favorites]

I heart canucks.
posted by grumpybear69 at 9:16 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I think this is specifically about the pasta, pronounced like multipass -ta vs pasta, like paws, of an animal, -ta thing, which in my experience does bug the shit out of many Americans.

Growing up in California I went to school with a girl from Michigan, whose accent was pretty indistinguishable from us Westerners except for her transmutation of "a" sounds in that manner. I found it a bit endearing and also secretly more than a little funny because I would picture a goat. "Aaaaa. Naaaaaa. Paaaaaasta."
posted by atoxyl at 9:18 PM on April 12, 2017

Dee - cal is also a pronunciation that sounds so wrong. It's deh-cle or deh-cal.
posted by Jalliah at 9:24 PM on April 12, 2017

I always thought the pawsta/drawma/jawva thing happened in the late 90s. And then one of my daughters pulled up the clip of "Smells Like Teen Spirit" from SNL Jan 11/92 where that week's host introduced the rest of the world to the Seattle band Nirvawna.

As for those British accents, somewhere along the way I read Mike Daisey's account of studying acting in England, and being expected to differentiate something like the Southwest West Hertfordshire accent from the Northwest West Hertfordshire accent, and how the instructor thought it was so obvious it didn't need further explaining.
posted by morspin at 9:32 PM on April 12, 2017

Canadian, born and raised, can't decide whether this is a long & committed troll or whether I just haven't heard the word enough times, period, to make an informed judgement. (Deckle, really? Do you have a corroborating source? Or a story about it that I could get into?)

I'm also Canadian born and raised, and I've definitely heard the word a few times. My job for awhile was to issue parking decals to drivers on behalf of the City of Vancouver. I probably heard the word pronounced a few thousand times in that period, and I never heard anyone say "dee-cal" that wasn't American.

A corroborating source? I dunno, ask Jaliah or blue_beetle, both of whose comments in this thread seem to suggest they pronounce it similarly.

I don't know what part of Canada you're from, so perhaps this is a regional difference. But I assure you, this is not a troll.
posted by good in a vacuum at 9:46 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I got into an argument with my mom about dee-cal & deckle recently; she (French Canadian, Prairies) says deckle.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 9:53 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

My job for awhile was to issue parking decals to drivers on behalf of the City of Vancouver. I probably heard the word pronounced a few thousand times in that period, and I never heard anyone say "dee-cal" that wasn't American.

Ok, I like this story, thank you. (Jaliah & blue_beetle, afaict, still have some kind of short a in there in syllable two, but Alvy's mom settles it.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 9:59 PM on April 12, 2017

I heard the word a lot growing up. Dad builds model planes and boats so he said decal a lot. He grew up in northern Ontario. I grew up west coast and it has always been dehcal.
posted by Jalliah at 10:00 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I don't know what part of Canada you're from, so perhaps this is a regional difference.

(middle and central-east part, bit of time in QC but I've mostly forgotten it)
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:03 PM on April 12, 2017

Ah, so it could be a regional thing. I haven't spent enough time, sadly, in much of the country outside of BC so I may be a bit myopic about how the rest of us talk!
posted by good in a vacuum at 10:07 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

I grew up in BC so not so regional.
posted by Jalliah at 10:11 PM on April 12, 2017

Chiming in from Vancouver; Ontario has a stronger accent then the west. More lilt in the delivery. Witness this clip. Although played for laughs it's authentic Ontario rural. (NSFW language). Compare with Trailer Park Boys, who are further East. TPB have even more lilt and sing-songy accents.

Raised in the '60's my pronunciation runs like this;
Dad's wife was Mum (spelt Mom), uncles wife was ant, the Italian noodles rhyme with Shasta, the classic apology is sore-re not saw-re, decal is one syllable, sked-jul not sked-yule or shed-yule. And it's zed not zee, but it's not zeb-bra it's zee-bra.
posted by Zedcaster at 10:12 PM on April 12, 2017 [8 favorites]

I might be, too ;) Yeah, there's tons of the country I haven't seen as an adult, or ever, BC included. (I went - where exactly in BC, I don't remember - when I was ~8. Still remember how gorgeous it felt. Shame domestic flights cost what they do.)
posted by cotton dress sock at 10:14 PM on April 12, 2017

bonobothegreat: "The Yanks joke about this "aboot" thing all the time but I'm not sure what they mean. About, out, shout, lout, doubt, gout, pout, (sometimes) route, tout, are all pronounced the same in Ontario. Is it East coasters they're making fun of?"

No, it's the Ontario accent, too. But the feature in question (Canadian raising) appears in all the example words ending in the -out sound, so they will have the same vowel. Basically, it's about a change in the diphthong before a voiceless consonant (like a t or an f).

To test whether you do it, ask yourself: do cloud and clout have the same vowel? what about knife and knives?

if yes, you don't do Canadian Raising. They have different vowel sounds (subtly) for me.
posted by jb at 10:22 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

I thought both Americans and Brits pronounced "pasta" as "pawsta

Brits pronounce it as if it were Italian, for some peculiar reason.
posted by Segundus at 10:23 PM on April 12, 2017 [6 favorites]

Having grown up in Montana and Washington state, I heard a lot of Canadians speak,
over the years, and I think it's a terrible slur to say that hearing Canadians speak makes Americans' skin crawl. I always enjoyed that Canadians sounded different than Montanans did and I loved hearing the occasional "a-boot", going "oot", etc. I thought it made them sound more elegant than we did.
posted by Lynsey at 10:36 PM on April 12, 2017

Can we talk about how Americans pronounce "decal", because... what. It sounds like they're saying two separate words. "Dee" "cal". It's so much easier if you rhyme it with "freckle".

Freckle? Are you completely insane?
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 10:46 PM on April 12, 2017 [9 favorites]

The Canadian accent is more pronounced the further you move east, and Quebec is simply France II with its own special English-language accent. Vancouverites sound the most "American," I would argue. And on top of that, a wide band of Wisconsin and Michigan and Dakota folks that sound "Canadian." Watch Fargo (or, you know, just go to Fargo) for that accent.

You can play Spot the Canadian with a few words from British English that Americans made different but Canadians somehow kept. An example I always think of is "process." American: PRAW-cess. Canadian: PRO-cess, retaining the British accent.
posted by zardoz at 11:13 PM on April 12, 2017 [1 favorite]

Decal totally rhymes with freckle. (British Columbia born and raised.)
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 11:34 PM on April 12, 2017 [2 favorites]

Television Britishers seem to say "mafia" to rhyme with "laugh-ia". I don't know any Canadians, but I'm sure that they would pronounce Chicago without the essential "caw" because, well, because! So, there!
posted by Chitownfats at 11:44 PM on April 12, 2017

Seattle resident since 1990, honeymooned in Victoria, family on both sides from WA. The American northern western and plains border accent (Minnesota to Washington) is clearly distinguishable from the Canadian, and as noted up thread, primarily via exceptional words such as pasta and decal. Of course, the longer I live here, the less distinction I hear.

The Canadian accent is more pronounced the further you move east, and Quebec is simply France II with its own special English-language accent.

Well, this seems unfair to Quebec and inaccurate, given that Quebec has a unique dialect and accent in French that makes it hard to understand if your French-language education took place in another part of the world where there is also a unique dialect and accent in French. I dunno if first-language Suisse Francophones have as hard a time as I do with Quebecois, but both dialects show the years of separation. Quebec may indeed have its own special English-language accent, but It's not France II, it's Quebec.

(accents deliberately not included)
posted by mwhybark at 12:07 AM on April 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

You know where Americans can hear a fair amount of a-boats and other bits of Canadiana is on children's public television shows, because so many of them -- Arthur, Odd Squad, Calliou (that rat bastard), Cat in the Hat -- are produced in Canada with Canadian actors. The accents are pretty generalized because they're selling to a pan-North American market, but especially the child actors (and Martin Short) let slip a few ultra Canadian pronunciations here and there. (Also Odd Squad occasionally shows the GO train in the background.)

Mighty Machines made a proactive decision to represent accents from all over Canada in its voice acting (I wondered if it was an artistic decision or a condition of their grant) and that may have been the first time I heard a strong Newfie accent. (On an airplane, I think.)

And, yeah, what the hell is up with "asphalt," Canada? After you called ash-phalt on a children's show about paving it took me months to convince my children there was no spare h and they were saying it wrong for America.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:11 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm having a very hard time reading this thread because I pronounce "pah" and "paw" the same way. It's like that comedy routine where the guy was reading off a sheet of paper "you say tomato, I say tomato, you say potato, I say potato -- I really don't see the appeal of this song."
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:17 AM on April 13, 2017 [6 favorites]

My girlfriend was raised by super southern parents (from the southern US, that is), and she informs me that there is a distinction. I still can't tell what you all are going on about.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 12:19 AM on April 13, 2017

What makes my skin crawl is folks claiming that we pronounce 'about' as 'aboot'. It's more like 'abuh-üüt', like a somewhat milder version of a Northern Irish or Glaswegian pronunciation of the same word.
posted by LMGM at 12:25 AM on April 13, 2017

Near Stirling, there are places that use something quite close to many Canadian vowel sounds, IMO. Including the raised diphthongs. I think that's where we largely get them from, Scots (and Irish to a lesser extent) immigrants.
posted by bonehead at 12:28 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

short vowels and glottal stops FTW.
posted by mushhushshu at 12:51 AM on April 13, 2017

My personal giggle-inducer is hearing Americans (dunno how regional this is, but I've heard it on both coasts, and loads on TV) pronounce experiment as "ex-spearmint". It's especially cute when they have no idea they say it like that!

For skin-crawling, look to Brits pronouncing oregano as "oreh-GAH-no". This is clearly why the Empire was lost.
posted by Ten Cold Hot Dogs at 1:11 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Australian, and I love the Canadian accent. There's something warm and comforting about it.
posted by daybeforetheday at 2:25 AM on April 13, 2017

“Canadian linguistic identity is here to stay on the long term.”

Yeah, that's what they said about Cockney.

This is clearly why the Empire was lost.

British or Roman?
posted by IndigoJones at 5:04 AM on April 13, 2017

New England checking in. It's pronounced par-ster and Mahz-der north of the 128 loop once you leave flatland. Sleep tight.
posted by Slap*Happy at 5:11 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

I am gobsmacked that there exist people for whom there is no distinction in the way "pah" and "paw" sound.

Really. I can't...just...really?
posted by cooker girl at 5:36 AM on April 13, 2017 [5 favorites]

Is this some weird French shit?

Hey don't blame us for that! We say beers.

You're not fooling anyone, we all know that "four beer" and "four beers" sound exactly the same in French.

As for the skin-crawling thing, as a recent transplant to the Boston area, I've heard abuses of the vowel "a" that would make any Canadian blush.

But the Quebecois French accent, now that is a special kind of hard to listen to.
posted by solotoro at 5:45 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

you mean KAY-BEKK-ERS?

KAY-BEKK-QWAH?
posted by Dressed to Kill at 5:54 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

At least Canadians don't say "walla" when they mean "voila"
posted by srboisvert at 6:05 AM on April 13, 2017 [8 favorites]

Rest assured, the French and the Quebecois (and the different Spanish-speaking countries, and Brazil/Portugal...) have these exact same provincial arguments over who's saying things wrong so bad, like they own the language.

For me it's whatever Midwestern dialect pronouncing "roof" like "ruff". Jesus Christ.
posted by cardboard at 6:07 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Duh. It's pronounced "viola".
posted by bonehead at 6:18 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

I'm married to a Canadian and we have longstanding good-natured arguments about the pronunciation of "drama" and "Hyundai".

The Ottawa Valley working class accent is just such a distinct thing, too. I remember being quietly floored when our movers from Southeastern Ontario came to move us from Sherbrooke to Kingston. My husband (who is from that region) was like, "That is not a weird accent. That's what people sound like."
posted by Kitteh at 6:28 AM on April 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

The one that always gets me - not so much a skin crawl but definitely a you-not-from-round-here frisson is the Toronto (? Ontario?) against with the long a. I suspect it may be the reason I can never fully embrace listening to Jonathan Goldstein's podcasts regularly.
posted by Mchelly at 6:36 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

But the Quebecois French accent

Think so? Check this example out. The young girl has a perfect Quebec accent, the old fella has a southern New Brunswick Acadian accent (chiac). They are barely the same thing.

As for this -Quebec is simply France II uh no. And loads of us on both sides of the Atlantic would disagree heartily about that.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:29 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

There's a fair bit of regional accent variation within Quebec Francais even. Over much smaller distances than with Canadian English too, I'd say. Probably reflective of the two or so centuries of Quebec history prior to long distance transportation being easy or cheap.

Remember western Canada was developed mostly thanks to the rail, when moving around was much easier than in the days of horseback. So the accents are much more homogeneous and widespread.
posted by bonehead at 7:37 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

This might also be the only time I can link the amazing southwestern Ontario accents on display from Letterkenny!
posted by Kitteh at 7:47 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

There's a fair bit of regional accent variation within Quebec Francais even.

Oh definitely. I grew up in a little village in Northern Ontario settled by people from northern Quebec and Gaspé. When I first lived in Montreal, people had no idea what to make of my accent.
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:49 AM on April 13, 2017

Is this where I can stick my head in and say that I am irrationally annoyed by the way the British insist on sticking an extra L in "chili"?

Also the way they pronounce "jaguar" as "jag-you-ur"?
posted by Mr. Bad Example at 7:51 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

AvE is a good example of a NB Atlantic accent, btw. He's a transplant in central BC and uses Alberta and BC slang frequently, but the boy is from somewhere south of Moncton and jumbles Atlantic slang and even some Acadian French into his salad.
posted by bonehead at 8:15 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Also the way they pronounce "jaguar" as "jag-you-ur"?

That's more like jag-you-ah, actually. And feel free to quibble about the animal, but god help you if you refer to the car marque as jag-waar.
posted by Dysk at 8:24 AM on April 13, 2017

(Also the comment about Brits pronouncing mafia to rhyme with laugh-ia is hilarious, because it clarifies nothing. Is the laff-ia pronunciation wrong? Because that's probably the most common here. Or is it the larf-ia pronunciation that's wrong? Are there even any other potential ways to pronounce mafia that don't rhyme with a common pronunciation of laugh-ia? May-fia, perhaps? Am I assuming this is the only way to say mafia that the commenter doesn't find hilariously wrong?)
posted by Dysk at 8:28 AM on April 13, 2017

I think there is an indigo-like disconnect here with 'passta', 'pahsta', and 'pawsta'. I'm Canadian and I can't think of 3 distinct ways to pronounce this word. I pronounce it passta and have lived with Americans who pronounce it (to my ears) pawsta. I have no idea who pronounces it 'pahsta' or what that would sound like. Can anyone enlighten?

There is a disconnect here. Everyone claiming "pawsta" and "pahsta" are the same sounds probably pronounce the words "caught" and "cot" the same. This is a thing, and it's widespread in the US.
posted by Mister Fabulous at 9:16 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Ha, my American husband told me I pronounced decal wrong, but turns out I'm just Canadian. Seconding kitteh that Americans get really riled up about the way Canadians pronounce drama.

I'm tutoring a Mexican woman in the US and we're working on short vowel sounds and, yeah, English is complicated and I can't figure out what our materials are trying to tell me sometimes. There are so many ways to pronounce 'a'. And apparently there's supposed to be a difference between 'wh' and 'w' but most Canadians don't have that anymore, known as the whine wine merger.

It's funny how your accent changes subconsciously. We live in California and apparently just visiting Wisconsin is enough to make me sound more Canadian.

Also, this is vocabulary, not accents, but Americans are really missing out by not acknowledging the genius of the word garburator.
posted by carolr at 9:33 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Torontonian here, and most of these cutesy "Canadians talk like this" articles always make me look at them and say "yes, maybe Canadians do talk like that, except in the largest city in the country."
posted by mightygodking at 9:40 AM on April 13, 2017

Pasta, shmasta.

As a Canadian living in the US I no longer longer know which way to pronounce "router".
posted by GuyZero at 9:43 AM on April 13, 2017

After you called ash-phalt on a children's show about paving it took me months to convince my children there was no spare h and they were saying it wrong for America.

But in 20 years once the US is a literal garbage fire saying "ash-fault" may be the shibboleth that gets your kid over the border to freedom.
posted by GuyZero at 9:45 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

Torontonian here, and most of these cutesy "Canadians talk like this" articles always make me look at them and say "yes, maybe Canadians do talk like that, except in the largest city in the country."

There are plenty of Torontonians who retain their rural Ontario accents or the accent from wherever they're from. I mean, Toronto's biggest cultural export fakes a Jamacian accent a lot of the time ffs.
posted by GuyZero at 9:46 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

This is a thing, and it's widespread in the US.

The other US thing that always stymies me is that there are people here in the US for whom "Mary," "merry," and "marry" are all pronounced in the same way. Which is just, you know, weird.
posted by holborne at 9:47 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

I'm a Southerner, but have lived in Canada for over eight years. I didn't have a Southern accent when I left the US (years of carefully ironing it out), but when I went home to visit my family, my sister (who does have a Southern accent) said that I now "talked funny."

I constantly disappoint Canadians and UK friends by not having that accent. "You don't sound like you're from Georgia!"
posted by Kitteh at 9:53 AM on April 13, 2017

As a Canadian living in the US I no longer longer know which way to pronounce "router".

As a Canadian in the tech industry it's "rowter" but but I take the short "root" to work . Yes I know how inconsistent it is.

And like a lot of "Canada is like this" articles, it's heavily Ontario-focused. Having lived in Montreal, Kingston, Calgary, and now central BC, I can tell you that there are differences in all those accents.
posted by sauril at 9:59 AM on April 13, 2017

The other US thing that always stymies me is that there are people here in the US for whom "Mary," "merry," and "marry" are all pronounced in the same way. Which is just, you know, weird.

I am one of those people.

Also, the caught-cot thing. I mean maybe if I think really hard about it there's an extremely subtle difference, but I just said "I will marry Mary and be merry" and all three words sounded the same to me. I grew up in Maryland, if that makes a difference (but not Baltimore, so I don't say "Murrlin." I say "Maryland" pretty close to how I say "Marilyn," which is probably freakishly weird to some of you).
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:05 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

("Maryland" is a two-syllable word, by the way. I still get made fun of by other Marylanders for saying it wrong, though.)
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:06 AM on April 13, 2017

cotton dress sock: "Canadian, born and raised, can't decide whether this is a long & committed troll or whether I just haven't heard the word enough times, period, to make an informed judgement. (Deckle, really? Do you have a corroborating source? Or a story about it that I could get into?)"

There appears to be quite some regional variation. Growing up in Quebec, I never heard it (as far as I can imperfectly recall, though it's not a very common word) pronounced as "deckle" until I met more people from other parts of Canada. As for instances in the wild, take a listen to this or this. If you've never heard it in real-life, I think it's definitely worth a listen. I admit it still sounds funny to me.
posted by mhum at 10:14 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

The fun you would have in my office. Nobody is from more than 35 miles away, but every single person has a distinct accent and vocabulary. My favourite new discovery is that Oldham apparently pronounces birthday as buthday.
posted by mushhushshu at 10:14 AM on April 13, 2017

The aural uncanny valley that Maudlin posits as the problem makes sense to me. I just spent 5 days in a ginormous conference with a heavy representation of Canadian scholars and I would be happily taking notes and conference tweeting away until some said "pro-gress" or "aboat" and all critical analysis would come screeching to a halt in my brain as I thought "omg she's Canadian" and then started obsessing over all vowels and slightly tweaked dipthongs.

Also the last vestiges of my Chicago accent is my predilection to pronounce roof as "ruff". cardboard's disapproval can't make me give it up.
posted by spamandkimchi at 10:17 AM on April 13, 2017

Pasta and Mazda aside, in Canada we definitely rhyme twat with what rather than the British version where twat rhymes with that.
posted by biggreenplant at 10:19 AM on April 13, 2017

mhum, I also grew up in Quebec and I've always said deck-le.
posted by sauril at 10:21 AM on April 13, 2017

Another Thunder Bay person here.

Growing up, I didn't think we had accents. Now, after living in Seattle for twenty years, when I go home everyone sounds like Trailer Park Boys.
posted by Sauce Trough at 10:27 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

sauril: "mhum, I also grew up in Quebec and I've always said deck-le."

I believe that. Memories are tricky and linguistic variation appears to be widespread.
posted by mhum at 10:28 AM on April 13, 2017

some said "pro-gress" or "aboat" and all critical analysis would come screeching to a halt in my brain as I thought "omg she's Canadian" and then started obsessing over all vowels and slightly tweaked dipthongs.

This is, to my experience, the big difference between Canadians and Americans.

Canadians are somewhat used to hearing variants in pronunciation because they watch American TV and have slightly more exposure to UK accents than the average American via TV or there just being slightly more British people around (at least in Ontario).

Americans, on the other hand, actually do grind to a complete cognitive halt when they hear someone say "zed" or "pro-gress". My anecdote is that I was camping once and I had to give the park ranger my license plate number and I said "bee cee ex zed" and when I got to "zed" she just stopped writing, looked up and we stared at each other for like 10 seconds. Time stood still.

Finally I said "zee. bee cee ex zee" and she nodded, wrote the letter and we moved on.
posted by GuyZero at 10:29 AM on April 13, 2017 [6 favorites]

mhum: I also have weirdness in my accent because my parents grew up in Essex and Hong Kong. And I lived in England until I was 3. And I grew up in a very Anglo area of a French province watching a lot of American TV from Burilington. So who knows?
posted by sauril at 10:36 AM on April 13, 2017

The famous Canadian ou in about (and doubt, etc...) seems to be a sound Americans don't have and don't hear.

Maybe not most Americans, but i hear it. Every. Time. Constantly pulls me out of tv shows when I realize they've cast a Canadian as an American. That's been one of the (many) impressive things about Travelers, all Canadian cast and not a ou in the lot.
posted by mikoroshi at 10:41 AM on April 13, 2017

I mean, Toronto's biggest cultural export fakes a Jamacian accent a lot of the time ffs.

I had no idea that Snow was such a big deal.
posted by bonehead at 10:50 AM on April 13, 2017 [4 favorites]

Once in Jamaica my wife and I were chatting with a couple of women we had just met. One was telling us about the great time they had the day prior while out on the ocean in a boat. The second she said it, I knew.

I asked her "So, what part of Canada are you from?" and she freaked out - "Oh my gahd he knows we're from Canadah, how did you KNOW?"

"...uh... you said 'boht'...?"

They were from Ontario. We had a great time just hanging out that night. I like Canadians. May the accent never die, and may curling and hockey coverage on CBC never cease. (Michigander, originally; learned to distinguish Yooper from Canadian at a young age)
posted by caution live frogs at 10:54 AM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

Maybe not most Americans, but i hear it.

Not saying that you don't notice the difference, but that Americans frequently can't replicate it, because it's a vowel sound I'm pretty sure you don't use. The whole "oo" thing isn't the right vowel to a Canadian ear: about and boot don't rhyme.

It's like the short u in Quebecois French (e.g. in but---goal), most non-francophones don't even distinguish it from a longer u sound.
posted by bonehead at 10:55 AM on April 13, 2017

My husband says he knows I've gone native because I now say "zed" instead of "zee."
posted by Kitteh at 11:07 AM on April 13, 2017

Canadian from Toronto here. I find it fascinating that people in Vancouver sound pretty much like me, but people in Buffalo (which is much closer) sound so different. The national border does make a difference.

One Canadianism that I haven't seen mentioned so far: I pronounce the words "Mary", "merry", and "marry" in pretty much the same way.

I have long wondered whether there are regional differences in Canadian speech (other than the obvious differences in Newfoundland and Quebec). Mark Orkin's Canajan, Eh? suggests that the Ottawa valley has a distinct regional accent. The mock-Canadian used by Doug and Bob McKenzie might be this regional accent too (though I am probably wrong about this).

One distinct Toronto speech pattern is the way we say the name of our city - the second T is not pronounced. This also comes up in the local pronunciation of "Milton" - the explosive part of the T consonant is left out.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:19 AM on April 13, 2017

And like a lot of "Canada is like this" articles, it's heavily Ontario-focused. Having lived in Montreal, Kingston, Calgary, and now central BC, I can tell you that there are differences in all those accents.

I was born in Montreal and lived there until I was 14. Francophone Dad, anglophone Mom, we always spoke English at home (major regrets for the good French I never acquired) and I went to English schools. When I moved to Toronto in Grade 9 (not ninth grade, BTW), my English was different enough from my classmates' that both peers and school staff struggled with it, usually saying that I sounded like I had an English accent.

I didn't sound British, of course, but my vowel sounds and maybe some of my enunciation were sufficiently different that they had to scramble for some sort of label. So I have a teeny tiny bit of compassion and patience left for Americans who insist that we say aboot or aboat instead of about.

(Just a wee bit. Please don't push it.)

As Gretchen McCulloch shows here, if you can hear the difference between the "ou" sound in "house" as a noun and "house" as a verb, you can hear the actual difference between the most common way Americans say "about" and the way most Canadians pronounce "about".
posted by maudlin at 11:20 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Oh, and I also find it fascinating that Americans can't reproduce the "ou" sound that we use in "out" and "about". I can understand using a different vowel sound, but not being able to actually hear the "ou" - wow.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:20 AM on April 13, 2017

Canadian here - I've spent my whole life consuming Buffalo TV and radio. Nothing could be worse than that nasal-heavy Western New York accent.

I can't think about Buffalo TV without remembering Irv Weinstein and Eyewitness News. "There's a fire in North Tonawanda tonight..." To my ears, the speech of people in Indiana or thereabouts is more grating. It's not just me: Kurt Vonnegut, who was from Indianapolis, wrote that common speech there sounded like a bandsaw cutting through galvanized tin.

I recall someone telling me that Americans have so many regional accents, they tend to see Canada as kind of like another American region.
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:40 AM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

biggreenplant:Canada we definitely rhyme twat with what rather than the British version where twat rhymes with that.

What the heck part of Canada are you from? Because I have never heard it pronounced any different then as rhyming with that.

I think this might have been posted on the Blue previously but there is this, if people need more concrete examples:
The Canadian English Accent Part 1 & part 2.
posted by Ashwagandha at 11:41 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

My husband says he knows I've gone native because I now say "zed" instead of "zee."

I lived in a francophone country for several years, and it definitely had an impact on my English, in some unpredictable ways (eg, I now am more likely to say that I've taken a decision than that I've made it, which still makes sense to anglophones, and sometimes instead of saying "that works" I slip and say "that walks," which does not at all), but 99.999% of the time, when talking about that letter, I will still use "zee." However, the movie World War Z came out while I was still there, and despite having absolutely no memory of ever speaking about it with anyone at the time, nor ever having seen it either while there or since moving back to the US, it will forever and ever in my mind be World War Zed.
posted by solotoro at 11:59 AM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

What the heck part of Canada are you from? Because I have never heard it pronounced any different then as rhyming with that.

Vancouver again, twat/hot or twat/fought, but not twat/hat or twat/fat where I lived.
posted by Zedcaster at 1:28 PM on April 13, 2017

On the flip side, buddy* here nails what grinds my conversational gears with Americans. Years ago, when I first was confronted by Americans with "Uh, Huh" as a response to "Thank You" (instead of "you're welcome") I'd get quite irritated. Now I just accept it as a cultural thing.

* buddy is an Atlantic Canadianism for any other person - usually male. In place of guy, dude or fella.
posted by Zedcaster at 1:33 PM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

If you have the time, SERIOUSLY check out those videos linked by Ashwagandha. They are absolutely detailed and fascinating. Part 1 and Part 2.
posted by maudlin at 1:39 PM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

On the flip side, buddy* here yt nails what grinds my conversational gears with Americans. Years ago, when I first was confronted by Americans with "Uh, Huh" as a response to "Thank You" (instead of "you're welcome") I'd get quite irritated. Now I just accept it as a cultural thing.

Ha! So much this. Moving to the US I had to tamp down my urge when thanking random retail staff people to say "WELL FUCK YOU TOO" after a reply of "uh-huh" to a "thank you".

Americans: saying "uh-huh" in response to "thanks you" is interpreted in much of the world as "go fuck yourself".

Please stop.
posted by GuyZero at 1:42 PM on April 13, 2017 [6 favorites]

As long as we can all agree that deeckle is wrong, and far too hockey-sounding.
posted by blue_beetle at 1:47 PM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

On the flip side, buddy* here nails what grinds my conversational gears with Americans. Years ago, when I first was confronted by Americans with "Uh, Huh" as a response to "Thank You" (instead of "you're welcome") I'd get quite irritated. Now I just accept it as a cultural thing.

Buddy there needs a brick in the mouth.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:52 PM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

One distinct Toronto speech pattern is the way we say the name of our city - the second T is not pronounced. This also comes up in the local pronunciation of "Milton" - the explosive part of the T consonant is left out.

I had never thought about this consciously, but yes! Milton and Toronto tend to pronounced with an alveolar stop on the "T."

But British friends and coworkers definitely use the plosive "T" in both cases now that I think about it.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 1:56 PM on April 13, 2017

As long as we can all agree that deeckle is wrong, and far too hockey-sounding.

I like it as a name for a mini-deke. "He's coming in fast through the slot, he deeckles, he scores!"
posted by good in a vacuum at 2:41 PM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

in Canada we definitely rhyme twat with what rather than the British version where twat rhymes with that

Can I ask how you pronounce "what?" Because the way you describe it I'm just hearing it as "twut."

New England checking in. It's pronounced par-ster and Mahz-der north of the 128 loop once you leave flatland. Sleep tight.

My mom is from New England, and she loves to tell the story of the time she saw a theater sign that said "Starring Henry Fonder."
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 3:08 PM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

The a in twat is the same as in cat. The a in what is an uh sound, as in wut. I have never heard anyone pronounce it "twut".
posted by Ashwagandha at 3:16 PM on April 13, 2017

I had an acquaintance from Michigan tell me about a gas tank cover that he left at the pump. He said he should have had a lacking gas cap. I couldn't understand why he didn't want one with features, like a lock for example.
posted by not_that_epiphanius at 3:29 PM on April 13, 2017 [2 favorites]

I had no idea that Snow was such a big deal.

Consider yourself Informed


I'll go
posted by Ray Walston, Luck Dragon at 5:34 PM on April 13, 2017 [9 favorites]

The contentious stereotypical Canadian “about” is just what I (originally Glaswegian) say: "ab owt". It's no surprise that the posh Toronto accent is almost indistinguishable from Kelvinside Men …

Both sides of the border are wrong about asphalt ("ass fault") and suggest ("sah jest"). And don't get me started on "wheat"; I mean, you don't even have the right sound in IPA, so I can't write it for you. But you won't catch me saying your different and fiddly /oo/ sounds: one's enough for book/boom/look/room, and cam/calm are the same too.

(and on decal/deckle: ms scruss [midwestern] says it as dee-cahl too, so ner! How can you ask for deckles on your decals without getting them stuck together?)
posted by scruss at 6:53 PM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

good in a vacuum: "He's coming in fast through the slot, he deeckles, he scores!"

Hmm. Deeckle sounds to me like it went wrong. "He tried a deke, Bob, but it turned into a deeckle. That one's going on the blooper reel!"
posted by clawsoon at 6:56 PM on April 13, 2017

hurdy gurdy girl: "Decal totally rhymes with freckle. (British Columbia born and raised.)"

Can confirm. First time I heard dee-cal I though that guy was making fun of the concept of decals applied to cars.

I find accents facinating. The only thing that really grinds me is the American Zee instead of Zed. Especially for the car model Z28. Zed 28 sounds masculine, maybe sort of cool and dangerous. Zee 28 sounds like your car is propelled by zip cord rather than gasoline.
posted by Mitheral at 10:35 PM on April 13, 2017 [1 favorite]

Whereas to me, Zed 28 sounds like a character in a sci-fi story.
posted by shapes that haunt the dusk at 10:38 PM on April 13, 2017 [3 favorites]

BC born and raised here. Never really cared about the zee/zed difference until fourth-year university, where my prof was explaining the Z-transform. If course explaining it meant pronouncing it a lot, and every time she did it totally would jolt me out of the subject matter and I'd lose my train of thought. It was a frustrating few weeks.

It's zed, damn it!
posted by Arandia at 9:14 PM on April 14, 2017

this is what causes the ‘ou’ sounds in words like ‘out’ and ‘about’ to be pronounced something like ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’.

There are people that actually believe that and it, it baffles my mind. If they'd only listen they'd see we pronounce it "a-boat."
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 9:57 AM on April 15, 2017

in Canada we definitely rhyme twat with what rather than the British version where twat rhymes with that.

'Twat' isn't even a Canadian term though. It's an expletive, like 'shite', that people have picked up from British movies because they liked the sound of it. Might as well debate how Canadians pronounce blancmange or Shrewsbury.
posted by Flashman at 10:30 AM on April 15, 2017

Might as well debate how Canadians pronounce blancmange

*raises hand*

Correctly, owing to a heavy diet of Monty Python as a kid:

Monty Python - Science Fiction Sketch (Part3) Scottish tennis at Wimbledon

"Blancmanges are commonplace in the UK, and as such these Monty Python sketches didn't explain what they were."

That was the weird part - for years I had the pronunciation of the food itself, but not the spelling, then the penny finally dropped when I saw a picture and the spelling somewhere quite by accident.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 11:40 AM on April 15, 2017

Speaking of things like blancmange, the weirdest, most head-turning experiences for me a Canadian in the US are the Cajun names from Louisiana. I keep wanting to pronounce them the way they would be in Quebec, but no, Farve is only one syllable and I just can't get my head around it.
posted by bonehead at 1:40 PM on April 15, 2017

Farve is only one syllable and I just can't get my head around it.

That's interesting. You mean something like Farvé or maybe Fever? I'm related to people with the name Fèvre and I've often heard Quebec people pronounce it like Fever, so 2 syllables. We would (we being Northern Ontario descended from Acadians & Gaspesians) would pronounce that with one syllable as well. Like Fève with a bit of an r sound at the end. The Cajuns had to get it from somewhere...
posted by Ashwagandha at 7:07 AM on April 18, 2017

Rolling the r for a start, which anglophones keep hard. I see enough French typed on English keyboards to assume that accents are missing, so sure, when I first saw the name I assumed it was Farvé. Which presumably gets anglicised into Fever, though that's not something that I would find obvious either.
posted by bonehead at 7:16 AM on April 18, 2017

Did you actually mean "Favre"? That's a not uncommon surname in the Louisiana/Mississippi Gulf Coast area that is pronounced "Farve." For example. I don't think I've ever actually seen it spelled "Farve" though. (source: from the area, grew up around Favres - none related to Brett)
posted by solotoro at 7:18 AM on April 18, 2017

Oh but then a quick white pages search tells me they are out there, and perhaps even in greater numbers. Huh.
posted by solotoro at 7:21 AM on April 18, 2017

Freckle? Are you completely insane?

Yesterday in the car on the way home, my (Quebecoise) wife said, "Just saying the word 'Samantha' gives me the freckles!"

Make of that what you will.
posted by sneebler at 10:07 PM on May 4, 2017