Canadian English
Sep. 1st, 2008 09:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guslwashroom(CA) = bathroom (US). When I hear "washroom", I instinctively think of "laundry room", and have so far failed to unlearn that.
The pronunciation of "ou/ow" is sometimes counterintuitive, e.g. "Howe" is [haw], "Lougheed" is [lowhid], "Kelowna" is [kəlowna].
I met someone from Prince George, BC, and couldn't understand half of what he said. "Oh, he's Irish! Um, no he isn't. What the heck did he say??". Apparently, Atlantic accents sound even more Celtic.
The Canadian raising feels natural to me, as does the "eh?" (meaning "don't you think?"). "eh" (meaning "by the way") feels less natural (lesson).
Wikipedia tells me that the raising allows one to distinguish "writer" from "rider" (my gut says it's [rʌIɾər]/[ræIɾər] and [raIɾər] respectively), a distinction most US dialects do not have. I suspect that US ears can unconsciously get the intended meaning conveyed by a Canadian speaker but not US speakers (since US speech makes no distinction, i.e. leaves it ambiguous). Whether this ability to understand is due to exposure to Canadian speech or to some a priori linguistic plausibility is an interesting question.
The pronunciation of "ou/ow" is sometimes counterintuitive, e.g. "Howe" is [haw], "Lougheed" is [lowhid], "Kelowna" is [kəlowna].
I met someone from Prince George, BC, and couldn't understand half of what he said. "Oh, he's Irish! Um, no he isn't. What the heck did he say??". Apparently, Atlantic accents sound even more Celtic.
The Canadian raising feels natural to me, as does the "eh?" (meaning "don't you think?"). "eh" (meaning "by the way") feels less natural (lesson).
Wikipedia tells me that the raising allows one to distinguish "writer" from "rider" (my gut says it's [rʌIɾər]/[ræIɾər] and [raIɾər] respectively), a distinction most US dialects do not have. I suspect that US ears can unconsciously get the intended meaning conveyed by a Canadian speaker but not US speakers (since US speech makes no distinction, i.e. leaves it ambiguous). Whether this ability to understand is due to exposure to Canadian speech or to some a priori linguistic plausibility is an interesting question.
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Date: 2008-09-03 03:57 am (UTC)Also, I believe the word "washroom" is used most places between the Rockies and Appalachians in the US as well. (In Australia I think it's "toilet", which feels awkward for me to ask for.) I don't know exactly where the soda/pop line is, but Canada is generally on the "pop" side.