The Canadian English Accent Part 1

I was out and about lost in the dark I was out in a boat lost in the dark I was out and about lost in the dark I was out and about lost in the dark anxiously pacing alone in the park anxiously pacing alone in the park plagued by a memory vaguely in sight plagued by a memory vaguely in sight plagued by a memory vaguely in sight Mary so Mary got married that night Mary so Mary got married that night they watched as he stood so proud by her side they watched as he stood so proud by the side they watched as he stood so proud by her side father fed them their lines then he kissed his bride father fed them their lines then he kissed his bride father fed them the Alliance then he kissed his bride standing a beaming they shared their cheers standing and beaming they shouted their cheers standing and beaming they shot at their chairs will i sat in the back covering tears while I sat in the back covering tears pasta lasagna ham tacos and bread pasta lasagna ham tacos and bread pastels anja ham tacos and bread the cooks were all fine they danced but she led the cooks were all think they danced but she led now half in the bag I begged and I prayed now half in the bag I begged and I prayed now half in the bag I begged and I prayed still the sad sack thought of nothing to say still this sad sack thought of nothing to say I cursed at the stars and doubted my doubts I cursed at the stars and doubted my doubts I cursed at the Stars and dated my debts sprang from my chair but my legs were left out sprang from my chair but my legs were left out foul language ensued I choked on a tooth foul language ensued I choked on a tooth foul language and soon I choked on a tooth well mercilessly mocked from the DJ booth while mercilessly mocked from the DJ booth they covered the car with streamers and cans they covered the car with streamers and cans honking and clanking like a marching band honking and clanking like a marching band honking and clanking like a marching band honking and clanking like a merging band I caught her eye I swear she mouthed wait I caught her eye and I swore she mouthed wait I caught her eye and I swore she mouthed wait a lead foot on the gas and left to my fate a lead foot on the gas and left to my fate then I turned red went mad as a hatter then I turned red went mad as a hatter tore through my runners sprinting to catch her he hit the brakes he was up to no good he hit the brakes he was up to no good he hit the brakes he was up to no good I bent then I snapped and flew over the hood I bent and I snapped and flew over the hood I bent then I snapped and flew over the hood Mary so Mary got married today Mary so Mary got married today Mary so Mary got married today Mary so Mary got married today lovesick and spurned I got carried away lovesick and spurned I got carried away I swore it would be my finest hour I swore it would be my finest hour I swore it would be my finest hour now I lay in bed broken into hour now I lay in bed broken and sour now I lay in bed broken and sour the country really breaks down into five main regions so we have BC the prairies Ontario Quebec the Maritimes and Newfoundland would be six but the difference between BC and the prairies is probably at a secondary level and that taxonomy if you will leaves out obviously half of the country the northern half of the country the population there consists well of two principal groups one is people of indigenous background and I mean they're native speakers of English and of course many of them are speakers of standard English but the English that they speak is is distinctive because it often carries the remaining effects of some of those indigenous languages even after after they're not actively spoken but there's also of course a non Aboriginal non end indigenous population in the north but the thing is that there are too sparse and they come from too many different parts of southern Canada to a formed a cohesive dialect in the traditional sense okay well all of the regions of Canada have some things in common that make them all Canadian in in a continental perspective so make them all different from the kinds of English we hear say in Britain or even in the United in most of the United States although most of Canadian English is actually very similar to the kind of English we hear in the western United States nevertheless there are some features of Canadian English that unify all Canadians like the fact that they don't make the difference between a lot and thought caught caught cut cut cut cut but there are also things that divide them so Canadian raising we said was something that the difference between the vowels and words like how and cow and where it's like out and South that is something we find across Canada though we said that Canadians are distinguished are differentiated in terms of the quality of the raised vowel between something like south and out in the west and something more like south and out in Ontario cow-house sour south cal south sour house cow house sour south cow house out sour south out south house out south house we also have a difference between the regions in terms of the are vowel so the vowel of words like start and car which is much darker in the West than it is in the East so in the West we get start and car whereas in Ontario we get start and car and in the east we get something like start and car so that's a really audible difference car start car start car start car start car start car car start start but we also get a difference in the vowels before are so the number of distinctions between vowels that occur before a double our weight with Quebec English being distinguished as the only variety that maintains some distinctions like Mary versus Mary as being distinct whereas that would be Mary and Mary elsewhere in Canada Mary Mary Mary Mary and also oh there's a little bit more of a distinction between words like borrow and sari versus versus Bora Bora and sori so the difference between sorry and sore is a little bit more common in Quebec than elsewhere sorry sorry sorry sorry and then the other big difference involves the sound of the a vowels or the short a vowel when it occurs before nasals so before N and M or before the G sound so that's where we find some regional differences in the details of how that vowel sounds in particular environments so when it occurs before and n we get a difference between cat and kin which is very characteristic of Ontario English and Nova Scotia English but not of Quebec English and less so of Western English bats and bat band bat and bat band and when it occurs before a G sound as in bat and bag the the difference I'm making would be characteristic characteristic of the western part of Canada bat versus bag but less so of the eastern part of Canada where you get bat and bag bat bag vague that thang fake so those are the main phonetic variables that allow us to identify five or six different regions of Canada based on phonetic variation there are some traditional enclaves of that are more distinctive of Canadian English that go back again to original settlements that that had for a long time been isolated from influence from outside so most of these occur in eastern Canada and the older settled settled parts so they and they mostly relate to the Sevi British settlement settlement from particular areas of Britain so Newfoundland is the the only the most obvious example of that on Jesus I had this really stunned think about this if you know I've always said mom as a kid but I don't know as I got older I was called a Mudder clout smack upside dead here's some Crockett Ladera Australia that's a Prince Edward Island wood is also a place that had for instance heavy Scottish settlements Danny and beaming they shed at their shears well I sat in the back got rain tears foul language and soon I choked on a tooth Oh mercilessly mock from the DJ booth and we sold us a very heavy Scottish influence on Cape Breton and in parts of mainland Nova Scotia like picked up County and the South Shore and Brunswick had a lot of Irish settlement as did Quebec and the Ottawa Valley between Ontario and Quebec was settled by a mix of Irish and Scottish settlers and had again until sort of the late 20th century a notably distinct kind of English that showed that influence but as we get west of Ontario the enclaves become fewer and harder to identify many of them are occur with religious communities that have self segregated themselves so so for instance the Mennonites of southern Manitoba are the Mormons of southern Alberta because of their cell segregation they have preserved to some extent a distinct kind of English that represents the English of the immigrants so in the case of the Mennonites it would be the low German influenced English of the Mennonites and in a Mormon case they came from the United States so they have some American English features that are preserved two things that most Americans focus on as the stereotype are the use of the word a by Canadians so when people say you know go down the street a and turn left at the next light say that hits Americans as being something distinctive about Canadian English even though recent research suggests that most Canadians don't actually talk that way so it should be one of those cases where the stereotype is really not in line with with majority usage but the other thing is the is the Canadian raising and that unfortunately gets portrayed in the written media quite frequently where American journalists have to come up with a spelling that somehow conveys the difference in sound it's actually the kind of difference in sound that can't be accurately conveyed with the resources of the English spelling system but they make their best effort by reselling out and about as boot and a boot OoT and a be OoT if they listen to Western Canadian English instead of Ontario English the more accurate Rhys pelling would be something like oat and a boat Oh a tea and a boa tea which actually does sound similar to how those words are pronounced on though in Western Canada but for Eastern Canada its spelling them OoT and ot is certainly not accurate because no one says a boot and boot in Canada but it's the best that you can come up with I guess using the English spelling system so when people when Americans if they don't have their own exposure to this directly they read this in a newspaper article then they tie it to they tend to reproduce it in speech as though it were an accurate portrayal which of course it's not the fact is that again the English spoken in most of the western United States which essentially is the kind of English we hear on most American media today which shifted west from New York City to Los Angeles and now it's pretty distinctively located in Los Angeles for the television and movie worlds and that kind of English is very similar to Canadian English and it's sometimes difficult to tell the difference and as a result for instance many Canadian actors can go down to Los Angeles and get jobs in the American media industry without really having to do much of an adjustment of their speech sociolinguists have traditionally believed that the major source of influence on someone's speech is the speech of their peer group so that for influence to spread from one person to another requires a fairly intensive degree of face-to-face interaction which is why we tend to speak like the people we speak most to most of us speak the way our elementary school class spoke and that tends to be the major influence on the kind of English we speak even if we watch say a lot of British television growing up in Canada we're not going to end up speaking British English because that's a passive one-way interaction we're receiving language but not giving it back and there's something about that one-way passivity that prevents any significant diffusion of linguistic features beyond perhaps a few vocabulary items and so on in terms of mainland Canada there isn't a great deal of research that has looked at specifically that question of whether regional differences are getting greater or lesser over time let's face it the differences in Canadian English from between Victoria and Halifax are pretty subtle to begin with particularly among the speech of you know fairly well-educated middle class urban younger people we do have a pretty homogeneous kind of English at that level so it's perhaps less obvious a question for Canadians than it would be for Americans for instance where they have very distinctive patterns associated with New York City with Boston with the south and those patterns have been well studied in all the research in the United States suggests that the regional patterns of American English are getting weaker in the speech of young urban populations and certainly that's true in Britain and in Europe as well so most of the research around the world suggests gradual convergence of speech with regional or national standard varieties whether that's happening in Canada is you know has not been studied to the same extent but likely is happening here as well the cottage camp cabin either a lake or a cabin summerhouse sneakers kicks runners running shoes notebook calle practice book an exercise book parking garage a park aid I'll say corner store convenience store death on our in Quebec backpack a school bag pack sack a knapsack a kit bag book bag I've called a spot where you pay for stuff at a store the till cashier the cash register gosh check it pop pop pop or soda a soft drink ah cool or we call it drink we went to the key went to the store to get a bottle of drink or bag chips you

Channel: Jimiticus

Views: 507,245

Rating: 4.8090067 out of 5

Keywords: Accent, Canada, Canadian Accent, Canadian, Ontario, British Columbia, Alberta, Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Quebec, Montreal, Newfoundland and Labrador, Newfoundland, Newbrunswick, Prince Edward Island, PEI, Nova Scotia, Northwest Territories, Yukon, Nunavut, Linguistics, Charles Boberg, Boberg, fronting of ahr, canadian raising, eh, oot and aboot, oot, aboot, canadian shift, foreign a, phonetics, phonology, McGill University, out and about, Canadian vs american accent, jimiticus, canadian dialect, eh?

Id: jrTCDi3xbTw

Length: 16min 51sec (1011 seconds)

Published: Tue May 17 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/jimiticus]

I made this video, and for those curious here are the sources I used - Dr. Charles Boberg, a linguistics professor at McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Also his book Regional Phonetic Differentiation in Standard Canadian English by Dr. Charles Boberg - https://www.amazon.ca/English-Language-Canada-Comparative-Analysis/dp/1107688140/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1462216617&sr=8-1&keywords=charles+boberg

His published paper The English Language in Canada: Status, History and Comparative Analysis by Dr. Charles Boberg - http://eng.sagepub.com/content/36/2/129.refs

[u/bingeclock]

I was in Toronto this past week. I went out a lot and talked to a lot of people. There were many who were surprised and some who didn't even believe me when I told them I was from the US (Northeast region). But then there were others who said I sounded like a cowboy.

I love the way Canadians say sorry.

[u/[deleted]]

The differences between "standard" American English and Canadian are subtle enough that it's good to have a quantification like this. I'm impressed by how much smaller the differences are from one part of Canada to another (with the exception of those "enclaves"), compared to the differences from one area of the US to another.

[u/mr_grass_man]

I don't know why but some of them sound a bit Irish to me...

[u/ltav]

So, as they say in Canada: peace oot! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0WB1I2wq2w