Do Canadians Have An Accent?
 

Do Canadians have (a very detectable) accent? I'm not thinking about the obvious "aboot" or "poutine", but just normal speech. I lived in Vancouver most of the time and when I travel to northwest U.S. (WA and OR) many people ask if I'm from Canada, can't think of other identifying cues.

Just curious what you guys think?

A couple of my coworkers and I talked about this once as we occasionally work with customers and vendors in the States and overseas. One of the things that we identified us saying was "Eh" (think McKenzie brothers).

Slightly off topic but... I was in the UK working on a project and was trying to explain something over the phone to someone in Scotland and they ask, "I'm sorry, can you repeat what you just said. I'm having trouble understanding you through your accent." Of course I had to giggle at that because I was having trouble understanding him and wanted to say, "Damn it. I don't have an accent. You have the accent." :D

Fer sure...many Canadians have French accents.:);)

Everyone who speaks english has an accent which reflects your origins, background and socio-economic status.

I've observed the American accent is typified by things including more nasal intonations and an emphasis on the "a" so that "aunt" and "ant" sound the same other than a long emphasis on the a in the former.

Except listening to people of a lower socio-economic background in B.C. (who sometimes sound vaguely Scottish), I can say I don;t hear too much "eh" in formal conversation much less "aboot".

As an American who now lives in Vancouver, I can say that yes, I do believe that many Canadians have very strong accents. You can't discount the "aboot" factor, because I do hear it quite a bit. But there is an inflection in the way many Canadians speak that you don't hear south of the border. There is also the differences in pronunciation that Cockroach alludes to, mostly in the "a," "e," and "o" sounds in words like "pasta," "process," and "Ikea" for example.

It's kind of a hybrid of a "Fargo" accent mixed with British pronunciations...

Of course, I'm not savvy enough to know the regional Canadian differences yet (though some of my co-workers from Nova Scotia have vaguely British accents).

Talk to someone who hails from Newfoundland or Cape Breton and believe me it will be very apparent Canadians have accents.:D

Well, as YVR Cockroach says, we *all* have accents -- and of course speech patterns, which can be as revealing as actual pronunciation. Completely unscientifically, I think the traditional stereotypical Canadian "aboot" and "eh" is perhaps not as common in the western provinces as in the east, but I can often still tell if someone I'm talking to in WA is actually from BC -- particularly if they say the word "sorry" or "process".

No-one knew I was from Canada until I kept saying 'washroom' :o

And what triggered that?

Maybe I don't hear "about" as "aboot" as I tend to pronounce "route" as "root" rather than "rout". I take it Americans pronounce "process" as "praw-cess" rather than "pro-cess"? I've never caught on "sorry" so what's the difference? I love how Americans pronounce "nuclear", or at least how the now more-popular pronunciation has caught on as it isn't either of the Merriam-Webster dictionary's two pronunciations.

I think "eh" is quite common out west but it depends on who you are talking to and where. I'd venture to guess those who are higher in socio-economic class and strata don't use it too much unless they're talking down in social situations. You may not hear it much in Vancouver but I'd venture to say you'll hear it used quite a bit in pubs in the Fraser valley.

Talking about accents, I was watching a CBC documentary a few years ago that talked about this very thing. The general difference in Canadian speech is inflection. That is, Canadian inflection and general speech patterns are far more "musical". Of course, we're probably comparing to West Coast USA here. The program also talked about changing pronunciations and lexicon coming out of NE States.

After watching, I've become a lot more aware of my speech patterns when presenting to Americans.

His bladder probably. :D Which reminds of the time I asked for the washroom at a swank hotel just off Hyde Park and the snooty concierge didn't get what I meant, so I had to remmeber to say the loo, the water closet, the restroom and he finally caught on.

After a few weeks around UK & Scotland, I wound up at the Hard Rock Cafe in EDI to add to my shirt colection and while downing a few pints, or seven, couldn't help notice the familiarity in the accents so asked the bartender and he was from Sherwood Park, which is essentially a suburb of Edmonton. He pointed out around 1/3 of the wait staff who were also Canadians and then it made sense.

There is also the Vancouver habit of inserting "right?" into a sentence of fact - as in "Tim Horton's sells good coffee, right?, so I'm going to get some on Saturday morning."

Maybe this is the more cultured alternate to "eh."?

Using "right" for emphasis seems to come and go with the ages and I'm pretty sure not only in Canada but elsewhere. I haven't really noticed it being interjected in the middle of a sentence of fact. It's sort of like young (Californian?) women using "like.. you know" for the same. I remember an older oiker of an Australian use "ay" (sounding like truncated "eye" with uptone) for the same.

FWIW, I've heard that older (50+) natives of Vancouver apparently used to pronounce the city name as "van(g)couver" though I've really yet to hear it (probably due to the lack of "natives".)

I've noticed the whole 'end a sentence with a question' thing in the UK, both England and Scotland. 'you're tall, aren't you?', 'it's true, innit?' - when the comment would have been complete without the ultimate interrogatory.

Perhaps the Aussies and Canadians picked it up from their more recent connections with the UK? The Americans don't tend to do this nearly as much, I've noticed.

I highly recommend, for people interested in such things, Bill Bryson's book Made in America. In addition to discussions on some American inventions, it discusses at length why American language is the way it is, particulary why it's different from English spoken in mother England, and why there are so many regional differences in America. I wish Canadian English had also been discussed in the book, as many of the same explanations apply. For example if an area was settled by Welsh or Irish or Germans or Swedes, or Puritans unique pronounciations and well as peculiar word usage evolved.
--
13F

Call your local cab number in Newfoundland:
695 - TREE TREE TREE TREE
http://www.legionoflions.com/attachm...1&d=1192588497
:D

This really threw me off when I first started to socialize with my UK clients and the more formal; "business speak" stopped.

You alright, ya? Coming to the pub tonight, ya? See you tomorrow, ya? ... and so on.

It was almost as if the question wasn't enough, they had to add emphasis as though it was a REAL question.:)

The problem was that after a week I started to develop the habit.

The abundance of Canadian-born and raised TV news anchor people suggests that central/western Canadian pronunciation is accepted and understood as being the standard of clarity. Peter Jennings was a CBC pronouncer on ABC. Morley Safer (CBS), and John Roberts (CNN) are prominent examples. Frontline news reporters are also abundantly Canadian. And then there's
Shrek, the most famous hidden Canadian of all (okay, maybe Mike Myers is a close second and Jim Carrey and Shania Twain). And everyone thinks that Celine Dion is an American with a normal accent.

Only Torontonians do not have an accent. Inhabitants of all other areas in Canada are born with crippling Canadian accents, and spend the rest of their lives trying to lose it to emulate Torontonians. ;)

Right, time to put the 'aboot' thing to rest for good.

In central Canadian English, the diphthong /aw/ becomes /∂w/ (sort of like a slurred-together 'uh-oh' if you can't read IPA) before a voiceless consonant such as t. For Canadian speakers it does not rhyme with 'boot' /buwt/ or 'boat' /bowt/, though people whose dialect doesn't have /∂w/ tend to mis-hear it as one or the other.

This is called 'Canadian raising' and was much written about by Jack Chambers, a sociolinguist at U of T who used to work across the corridor from me.

The two pronunciations of 'route' are a completely different issue. The Canadian/French one really does have an /u/ sound, whereas the USese one has /aw/. (Of course if a Canadian were to attempt the US pronunciation it would come out as the Canadian /∂w/. :p)

</regurgitation of first-year lecture>

I think most people in France would disagree with you there. ;) They all insist that I have a very marked Canadian accent (except for the people with no ear for accents, who tend to think I'm Belgian :o).

Yaers ago, I remember my B.C. classmates making fun of American professors who pronounced the neighbouring state to the south (or U.S.) capital as "Wah-shing-ton" while up north it was more of "war-shing-ton".

To me people in B.C. speak in a way that is "flatter", or somewhat close to standard North American English (the midwest dialect, e.g. CNN), ya?

I'd actually go the other way around. CNN speaks like BCers (or at least Pacific Northwestners) :)

One interesting website is the following
www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Canadian/canphon1.html

Provides a rundown of a number of pronunciation issues and some reasons why - and it is a pretty readable site given that it is out of a university. Although I still can't think why everyone doesn't think Mt. Shasta rhymes with pasta.

It also goes through some situations where different words have almost the same pronunciation - American stack vs Canadian stock.

Yes sir. :p

I don't think I do, but I've had people tell me I do. To me, I sound exactly like any other American on a US TV program.

And I never say "eh" (but I do catch myself saying "hey" occasionally).

Do you tend to use the word ' Hey ' as a question alot ?

How about asking where the WASH-ROOM is located?

just 2 examples of differences in language.

French hasn't much to do with it as there are alot of Basque in the
Northwest (alot live in Idaho).