Talk:Canadian English/Archive 1

message: This artical Canadian English, is not mentioned in Language in Canada or Bilingualism in Canada. Can it be useful?   17:47, 13 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Language in Canada and Bilingualism in Canada

message: Does anyone here ever notice that Canadians tend to pronounce the word "Southern" as "Sow-thern" rather than "Suh-thern"? Am I the only one that does this? Is this a feature of Canadian English or just my English?
That seems to be a Canadian thing. I have an American friend and "Sow-thern" drives him crazy. So does saying "raa-dee-ay-tor" instead of "ray-dee-ay-tor" --Munchkinguy 18:27, 4 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: ''Southern'' and ''Radiator''

message: Bad example. Lots of English-speakers all over the world say "serviette" rather than napkin. Perhaps the difference is that Canadians are not trying to be posh when they use the word? - clasqm
In that case, go ahead and remove the sentence about serviette!
Not unless I (or a Canadian, more likely) can think of a better example to put in its place. That's how it works here IMHO. - clasqm
In my idiolect, a napkin is made of cloth, while a serviette is made of paper. I'm guessing my idiolect is representative of wider Australian English, but I've learned to be not entirely sure. -- SJK
:In mine, too. - montréalais
::I'm from Vancouver and we always called things out of paper, napkins. I called the cloth ones "cloth napkins".  :-)  My granparents (2nd and 3rd generation canadians) however seemed to call everything serviette.  dave 18:52 26 Jul 2003 (UTC) 
I've used both; but note that serviette most likely came here from Britain, rather than from Quebec.  Just because a word is of French origin in English doesn't mean it's still in use in French, or that it means the same thing.Skookum1 08:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Serviette

message: I've read that the 'Standard Canadian English' dialect (the type of English spoken in most of Ontario and points west) is the most geographically widespread dialect of any language in the world. It said (and my own experience backs this up) that there is essentially no difference in accent or word usage over the entire area - whereas both these things change noticeably for every other language in every other country over dramatically smaller distances.
This incredible amount of uniformity, apparently, is due to the fact that Western Canada was settled so recently, and the inhabitants (mostly Ontarians and non-English speakers) didn't have the time in isolation (before the advent of mass communications) to develop their own accents.
Can anyone more knowledgeable back this up? - user:stewacide
:OK, I'll try and answer you - but you won't find me backing the pan-Canadian monodialect thing.  I'm hard and firm on the notion that there are distinct accents in Western Canada, despite extensive efforts to homogenize us, and to perpetrate the myth that only Newfoundlanders and Maritimers have a distinct accent (whuh?  First Nations people for starters, and many more).  Just because you don't listen for it doesn't mean it isn't/wasn/t there.
:I'm from British Columbia, born in Vancouver, raised partly in and near the Fraser Canyon and in the Central Fraser Valley and have lived in Greater Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler for most of my adult life, with some time back in the Canyon or abroad or whatever and have tooled around most of southern BC at one time or another, at least once (that's a lot becaus of the distance and isolation sometimes involved; it's a big place; not because it's hard to take).  
:So I've heard a lot of accents from smalltown to posh old money homes (old BC money, that is). And "coming home" into the Canadian dialect regime after a while abroad can sometimes be a bit strange; but it makes you hear the local differences, and the speed with which this place (Vancouver and the Lower Mainland) has changed makes it so you can hear how the local way of speech has changed.
:Needless to say I dispute the notion that Ontarian English is standard across the country; that's become the case because so many Ontarians have moved west, and of course because of the homogenizing influence of the Big Media.  There's definitely - or was definitely - a BC dialect, or a group of dialects since the Interior and the Island had their own pecularities once upon a time, and each valley in the Interior could be somewhat different depending on who had settled there and so on.  Modern transportation and the communications revolution changed all that, and in the course of the migration inwards there came the notion that everything here was just the same because it was also part of Canada.  But nothing could be further from the truth.  
:The ethnic composition and immigration/settlement history of BC is quite different, even from that of the Prairies, and the way people "lived apart" for so long because of the mountains and waters etc  In the Interior there can be a distinct cowboy twang, more Arizonan than Texan, and that's historical; although some may say it's not "Canadian" the reality is that that identity is a core part of British Columbia's history and culture; same with the fishermen, or the guys on the docks, and in the milltowns.  There's definitely accents; just because no academic has ever condescended to document them means they're not there, or weren't (you can't study something after you've extinguished/absorbed it.
:Special words from BC are many, including the famous ones from the Chinook Jargon - skookum, hyas, hiyu, muckamuck, saltchuck, the chuck, skookumchuck and a few others.  There's also specialized industrial slang - greenchain, choker, and we always say logger rather than lumberjack, except as a soft joke as in "lumberjack's breakfast" (a mondo-sized breakfast plate invented in old Gastown c.1870).  "Spinny" used to be BC-idiosyncratic (for a type of girl) but I think it's fairly widespread now.  And some areas have borrowings from the local native way of speech; in Lillooet there's something like a "kweesht" which expresses sudden dismay or disgust that everyone uses but is clearly St'at'imcets (or Chinook in origin, flavoured by St'at'imcets.  Whites there will use sama7 to call to each other (pron. shama and very derogatory, but the only word in the language for whites]].  I'd imagine the same is true elsewhere in towns with large native populations; the local term for "hey, white boy" is probably adopted into local English, or known of at any rate.
:Also, "Back East" and "Down East" and "Out East" in BC means Toronto, not the Maritimes.  Well, it includes the Maritimes, but it starts at Kenora, or maybe Thunder Bay.
:The term "Big Smoke" is British Columbian in origin, and meant Vancouver.  All that mill smoke, and all the big fogs (smoke is Chinook Jargon for fog, which used to be very common, unlike today).  Now Toronto's gone and stolen it (we hear it on the national news all the time - the national news discussing not much else than what's going on in Toronto, of course), even tried to make it into something of their own public image.  Not surprising since they've looted the rest of the country for culture, and imported a hundred or so more, because they didn't have any of their own in the first place (other than Orangeism). Ok, I'm being satirical but it's true that Big Smoke was part of BC slang, and dates back a century; musta been taken home to Ontario by someone who lived out here for a while. 
:There's also the issue of the omnipresence of British English, and various forms of overseas English, as well as second-language speakers being part of the social fabric for most of this century in great numbers.  I grew up around Scots, Irish, Australian, Indian (subcontinental), Indian (First Nations), American (various kinds), Germans, Scandinavians, Chinese, Greeks, Hungarians, Italians, and Slavs, and the people I'm talking about are as much a part of thed social fabric as I am - and have been since my time (b.1955).  So their accents are (to me) legitimately British Columbian; you don't think twice about hearing them.   
:The funny part is that despite all that British Columbians at one time were supposed to sound American to Easterners (see note above about "Back East"), but when I went to McGill for a year (74-75) I found a lot of the Canadians (I was in residence, so they were from northern Ontario and the Maritimes mostly) they sounded kinda American to me; i.e. the Ontarians did; almost Ohioan.  That would be because of the north-south nature of social relations along the boundary; I can hear an accent in Seattle (Seaddle WARshintun) that's definitely Okie; but ask someone from outside the Pacific Northwest and they'll tell you people here talk like Seattlites; except for that about/aboot thing.
:We also have a long-standing connection to California (including me personally; my mother was born in Toronto but raised in California, has lived in Canada since the war but stays in touch); historically Vancouver was originally settled via San Francisco – and the Orient – not overland, not at first anyway.  So the California traits are around, especially surfer style lingo among youth; we also got a hefty dose of Draft Dodgers in the ‘60s and early ‘70s, and quite often they’ve been high profile in the media/politics/business etc
:All this devolved off your question about populations and language in Canada.  You'll note in the backnotes on Vancouver that there are more people with less-than-three generations out of Britain than there are people whose families have been in Canada (from Britain) for at least three generations.  Yes, it's because it was settled later, but it was also a different cut of Brit, some from the Raj, some from HK, some from the Indies or the Cape; and despite the huge influx in from Toronto the last decade and more it's interesting that there's still so many Vancouverites with direct British connections..  But it was also a different kind of settler, from a different class background and from different countries, and BC has been multicultural since long before Pierre Trudeau tried to claim credit for the idea, and impose it on the rest of the country (which is what was done, to varying success).Skookum1 23:06, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Standard Canadian English vs BC English(es)

message: One further comment; lately there's bits in the paper occasionally about how native Vancouverites (i.e. someone from here, not a First Nations person) pronounced the city's name; supposedly Vankewver.  And what gets me is that they put it like WE are saying it wrong.  Not that I've ever noticed the difference.  Could be because of the endemic Dutch, Slavic and Scandinavian influence; Dutch especially in the Lower Fraser Valley, Slavic in the East End and most of the Tricities and north side of the valley.
I don't mean to be overlong, or controversial, only to lay out some observations about BC English, speaking as a BCer. If someone could edit down all the stuff above and depersonalize it some of it should be in the main article; then this item can be truncated.  I just had to tell it like it is.... I couild always trim it up myself and make it into an article reffed off the Canadian English page; i.e. on BC English; but I don't have documentation or primary sources (tapes, studies etc), only my own observations and experiences.  Skookum1 08:30, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I've never noticed anyone in Vancouver say "VanKEWver". What's the deal with that?--24.207.39.200 14:51, 8 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Vankewver" vs "Vankoover"

message: I think the words "toonie" and "loonie" should be removed as examples of "uniquely" canadian words.  I was kind of surprised that they were on the list, because it's just what we call our dollar and 2 dollar coins.  They are basically just slang.  However there is no alternative in British English or American English.  Chesterfield however, does belong there, as does toque, if in fact they call it something different in Buffalo or other American cities where gets damn cold in winter.  My point is, the article seems to emphasize the differences between the english languages, however this list just mentions some slang terms which don't even have alternatives in other countries!  like toonie and loonie.  I also don't agree with Garburator being rare in Canada since I have had a garburator all my life, and my parents were by no means rich!  I'm from Vancouver though, maybe this article was writen by an Ontario-ite?   dave
:I've been waiting for the five-dollar coin which will come along sooner or later into circulation - a "Foonie", presumablySkookum1 23:03, 23 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Toonie and Loonie

message: The article does not mention the other two words that (in my observation) combine with "about" to make the uniquely Canadian shibboleth: "sorry" (rhymes with "hoary", not "sari") and use of the word "washroom" where other dialects would use "toilet", "WC", "bathroom", etc.  I don't think any of these is unique, but I believe the comnbination is.
Maybe it's because I'm from Toronto, but my pronunciation of "sorry" is somewhere inbetween "hoary" and "sari."  
The vowel-raising phenomenon is also heard among educated native New Yorkers (as in the city).
..Educated eh? You've obviously not been to Brooklyn, Queens, Bronx.
:Hey, man, if you think it goes in there, add it. That's the glory of, that's the story of...Wikipedia. jengod 02:51, Jan 23, 2004 (UTC)
EAVESTROUGH is another uniquely Canadian word (look it up). --Xwu 16:15, 11 Mar 2004 (UTC)
thread_title: Sorry and Washroom

message: Why isn't maritime(New Brunswick, PEI, Nova Scotia) english mentioned on this page? The unique accents of the area are completely ignored by this website, and come to mention that, any other website I have ever seen about 'Canadian' English. I know that most of english in Canada is quite homogenous, with the notable exception of Newfoundland, but there are definitely regional accents in the maritime provinces that are easily recognized as not being 'standard' canadian. In fact I would say some of the regional accents are quite unique to North America. Why are they not addressed here? Has no linguist ever taken time to study these regional dialects?
:My knowledge of developments in dialectology in this regard is not exhaustive, and I too would be grateful for additions from a knowledgeable person. I agree that the article is deficient in this regard. - Montréalais 21:29, 3 Dec 2004 (UTC)
thread_title:  Maritime(Canadian) English 

message: Canadian "Eh?" should be discussed here.
:Why? --Munchkinguy 22:29, 3 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eh? 

message: 30 million? How was that arrived at? Are all of the 5 million French speakers bilingual? I doubt it. Check the 2001 Census and revise that figure downwards. That is not to mention the many Canadians whose native language is Cantonese, Mandarin, Hindi etc and who do not really speak Canadian English, indeed can hardly muster up a few words, especially older people. Many of these people speak British English or some other variant of English (such as Caribbean) rather than Canadian, so someone should look into the number of true "native speakers".--BrentS 17:23, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Number of English speakers 

message: I don't want to edit this myself, mostly because I'm tired and my grammar is off, but this part sounds odd:
"College student" is Canada might denote someone obtaining a diploma in plumbing; --- 24.76.141.132 01:01, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "In Canada, the word 'premier', as meant to be the leader of a provincial or territorial government, is pronounced "prem - yare" in most places, as opposed to the United States, where it is pronounced "prem ear". Premier, as in a movie premier, is pronounced the same in Canada as the rest of the world."
For one thing, all the people I know (I live in Manitoba) pronounce it "preem - yer". The other thing is that a "1st Movie Showing" is spelt "Primiere", so this entire paragraph may be useless. --Munchkinguy 03:49, 1 Apr 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Grammatical error? 

message: Not all parts of Ontario use short "a" in words like "drama."  I, and everyone I know, from Windsor, ON, say "drama" like "draw-muh" and "pasta" like "paw-stuh."  I wonder if it is a Southwestern Ontario thing.
Or maybe the fact that you're so heavily inundated with Detroit media in Windsor. Windsor only has one TV station, doesn't it (last time I was there it was CBET, Windsor 9)? As compared to how many in Detroit...--MarshallStack 05:36, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  Short "a" in Ontario - this is not a universal pronunciation for Ontario 

message: Where it says:
: British spellings which include digraphs (or their two-letter equivalents) are beginning to disappear from Canadian spellings. Words such as encyclopædia, dæmon, fœtus, and pædiatrician are spelled encyclopedia, demon, fetus
I've lived in canada nearly every day of my life for 27 years, never have i seen an æ or œ... is this a joke? Either way "beginning to" can't be the right word. --Trode 19:15, 17 October 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: These are considered rather obsolete in all forms of English.  According to Bringhurst's Elements of Typographic Style the ash (æ) and ethel (œ) are only used for deliberate archaism or in academically precise quotations.  Encyclopædia Brittanica uses an ash in its name, but encyclopedia in other contexts.  —Michael Z. 2005-10-17 20:56 Z
On the lyric sheet for Rush's 1982 Signals album, the word "anaesthetic" in the song "Digital Man" uses the "ae", rather than the American "anesthetic". Interesting in light of the fact that the band's lyricist, Neil Peart, has used American spellings almost exclusively since the early 1990's, their recent studio album is called "Vapor (rather than "Vapour") Trails" and bassist/vocalist Geddy Lee titled his solo album "My Favorite (rather than "Favourite") Headache". I've heard that the Canadian releases of both those albums have the "u" added but unfortunately I didn't check the last time I was at a music shop in Canada this past summer.--MarshallStack 02:16, 6 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  we use digraphs? 

message: As a native Minnesotan, and someone who's been all over the state, I can attest that no one in Minnesota says "aboat". I have friends and family in Winnipeg and Toronto, and they certainly would argue that I don't talk like them as well. Canadian Rising sounds just as distinct to my ears, as it isn't a feature of the Minnesotan accent.
One can hear it in certain parts of Michigan, unsurprisingly those near the Canadian border. I've heard it in Port Huron, which is opposite Sarnia, Ontario. People in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan also say "eh" more than some Canadians I've talked to.--MarshallStack 05:49, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Yes, I can imagine that to be true. --24.31.29.171 11:50, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  About / Minnesota 

message: Which is the most commonly used in Canada? "Chesterfield" and "settee" are almost never used here in the States, it's either "sofa" or "couch", or sometimes (rarely) "davenport". My extended German (Alsace-Lorraine, actually)/Canadian family in Wellesley Township, Ontario, use "chesterfield".--MarshallStack 05:38, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Couch" or "sofa" are actually by far the most common terms in Canada as a whole; while "chesterfield" is considered characteristically Canadian, it's primarily a regionalism and/or an age-related sociolect. It's not really standard in Canadian English anymore (although we almost all still understand it, it's not the word most people use.) Bearcat 06:02, 10 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  I'm not really sure that's true.  Certainly when I speak "Chesterfield", "Sofa" and "Couch" all carry the same denotation, but they have strongly different connotations.  I'd almost says it's wrong to call the ratty mass I picked off the curb a chesterfield - it's a couch.   Roughly speaking, chesterfields are the highest end, and couchs are the lowest end, i.e. you invite the Queen to have a seat on your chesterfield, your mother buys a nice new sofa at Leon's, and you let your stoned friend crash on your couch.  I doubt I can find a citation for this - but it's certainly how I understand the language. WilyD 22:07, 6 March 2006 (UTC)

text: When I was a youth in Western ontario in the 60s <I>chesterfield</I> appeared mainly in <I>chesterfield rugby</I>. <I>Rugby</I> for football was dying out then, too – my high school principal always called football games rugby matches, but the rest of us called them football games. And really, it's not rugby. These days <I>eavestrough</I> seems to be getting competition from <I>roof gutter</I>. John FitzGerald 03:44, 18 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: "Chesterfield rugby"? Sounds like a euphemism for canoodling in the living room...SigPig 00:51, 12 March 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Chesterfield, sofa or settee? 

message: I've held back on adding to the "Regional Variation" section because it's obviously based around prononciation; so I put some of BC's special lexicon at the end of the section just before (it could be bigger, but I focussed on only two CJ words and ignored other local specialty words for now).  Prononciation, though, shouldn't be taken for granted out here (as it so often seems to be by other Canadians, as I've pointed out here before).  Just yesterday at work one of my coworkers, who has a certain style of speaking, let it out that he was from Vernon (in the Okanagan) and, sure enough, everyone else I've known who's had that style of speaking is from Vernon; not from Enderby, not from Armstrong, not from Salmon Arm, not from Kelowna, but from Vernon.  I think the reason that there's little knowledge of dialects in BC is that it's been assumed that there aren't any so no earnest little linguists have toodled out to the boonies to collect them.  There are definitely regional styles of speech, and some prononciation issues too; I don't have enough IPA and I don't have any references (because no one's studied in the area; because it's assumed that they don't have to etc.) so for now I can't add meaningfully to the Regional Variations section, at least not in regard to the old local dialects in BC (which used to be fairly distinct because of the geographic isolation from valley to valley and occasionally in the case of specific towns, such as Vernon; but I'd bet there are more if I had the time/talent to study it).Skookum1 10:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: BC English section?

message: One thing that's overall missing from this page is "allophone prononciation/grammar", to borrow the Quebec word for someone whose mother tongue is neither English nor French.  Well, leaving the obvious fact of First Nations English dialects aside (these are native English speakers, often heavily influenced by French and Irish because of the Catholic clergy's presence in the schools - upon their parents and grandparents, that is), the presence of so many ESL speakers in Canada (throughout the 20th Century particularly in BC and the Prairies) means that heavily-accented English is very present in ordinary society, be it one's parents or at the store; traits from this influence wind up in native-speaker English.  Other than calques, articular usages include things like the dropping of the plural form and pronouns and some prepositions in Vancouver English, i.e. not just when an ESL speaker says them, but potentially because native speakers will use the ESL grammatical form when speaking to an ESL person, or someone they believe is ESL, e.g. "How much banana?" meaning "how much are the bananas?".  This is very common in Vancouver, so much so that it's taken for granted and you often don't realize you've done it, or don't stop to think about it anyway.Skookum1 10:18, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: "Allophone Dialects"

message: :I had a long conversation on a bunch of different topics with a friend yesterday who's also a published author/journalist.  He had been this last week talking with two or three other "name" poets/authors of British Columbian extraction, and they were discussing old pronunciations common in BC that are now no longer heard; the example I remember is "harry" (sort of) vs "hurry", and in general a British-style use of pronouns, the disappeared 'r' at the end of some words, and so on.  Of the three names he mentioned, including his own, two were from southern Vancouver Island (one is the great-granddaughter of a colonial governor, in fact) and he himself is Irish-Canadian of working-class stock around New Westminster and Pitt Meadows, so it's not just a British-class relic-accent we're talking about, but something he (and they, and I) remember as current in the way English was spoken in BC before the mass homogenization of Canadian English promoted/forced by the CBC/CTV and before the mass migration to BC of Maritimers, of Ontarians and other Easterners ("Easterner" is a BC term for anybody from east of the Great Lakes, sometimes for anybody from east of the Rockies).
:Because linguists and academics have needed to pretend that regional distinctiveness in BC either does not exist or was not worth studying does not mean that it didn't exist; all it means is that that the academics were too busy studying First Nations languages instead of anything else in BC (not even Toi Shan Chinese, the original dialect here, has received much study).  In parallel, the Canadian-academic fashion in dumping on the once intensely-British cultural milieu in BC has ignored the influence of those people's accents on their own offspring and the culture which built up around them; hence even someone from a non-English background, such as the friend above already described, had neo-British pronunciations in their ordinary speech.  Combine that, in the Interior, with the legacy of the cowboy/Dixie twang that typified non-British settlers in the Interior, and you get some pretty special accents that, although the academics maintain they don't exist and so they're not going to study them, manage to persist, if only in our memories.  Denials of the relevance or validity of this from Canadians from outside BC only make the case stronger.  That there are no academic cites is a failing of academia, and of the stilted, biased agenda of Canadian cultural sciences and linguistics.Skookum1 20:28, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: As someone born and raised in Victoria, I can attest to the existence of what I call "Vancouver Island English," which does have a certain precision and Englishness about it.  People I meet occasionally ask if I'm English, in fact.  One need only listen to David Anderson speak to get a taste of this accent.  It is, alas, fast dying out as the Island has become much less isolated.  One quality of the dialect is the elongation of the "o" (the "o" in "know" pronounced like the "o" in "toe").  This is not my imagination - not only do I do it, but living now on the mainland, I've identified fellow Vancouver Islanders by these peculiarities of dialect.Fishhead64 05:14, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Follow-up

message: *"Billy's Puddle" – Williams Lake (used half-derisively in the southern Cariboo, usually rural/smalltown users.  Also Willy’s Puddle.
*"the Lake" - used more locally around Williams Lake, and often specifically meaning the bar, i.e. the beer parlour in the Lake Hotel (recently burned down); all hotel beer parlours are referred to this way – the Bellevue (in Mission, aka the Smellview), the Haney, “the Del”, the Astoria and so on.
*"Chillywack":  Chilliwack pron. chih-lee-wak as opposed to chih-lih-wak.  Same category as Willy’s Puddle, Cash Crick, Lillywet and such
*"Squish" - Squamish.  Also, lately, "Squampton" (it rains a lot, y'see, beautiful though it is).  \
*Mispronouncing Quesnel (KWEH-nel) as KWEZ-nel is a bit popular too, but I don't think I'd say it there (it's a tough town, very tough and of a certain breed; wouldn't be surprised if someone tracked down a dialect given the forceful personality of most people I've met from the northern Cariboo, come to think of it).  As a family name I've heard this pronounced like "Connell", with the stress on the -nell.
*"Pembertoonians" - folks from Pemberton, used in the Sea-to-Sky Corridor and Lillooet and thereabouts; Pemberton is the “hick” end of “the Corridor” (Horseshoe Bay-Squamish-Whistler-Pemberton-Mount Currie)
*“Lillywet” – I hate this one if it’s used accidentally, but as someone with roots in the area I’ve been known to use it to, just like the other locals.  Same category as Billy’s Puddle or Cache Crick or Pembertoonians.  Lillooet is often mispronounced by those not familiar with the name, e.g. Lilloh-WET.  Frontier-era attempts to spell this name were many, e.g. Lilloet (still common), Liluet, Littlewhite, and more.  Originally Lil'wat, also spelled Liluet or Lil'wat or Leelwat (Lil'wat is the proper spelling in St'at'imcets orthography
*"Cache Crick" - Cache Creek.  Very common, especially in the Interior.
*“Ditchmond” or “Ditchland” – Richmond, so called for the deep drainage ditches which line all major streets (much of the city is below sea level, not as bad as New Orleans but still pretty risky.  There are no basements in Richmond, needless to say)
*“Mission Shitty” – I graduated from Mission High but have to admit this I’ve heard and also used; the place’s old name was Mission City and the downtown area still gets called that (that was Mission City, before amalgamation with the surrounding “muni” – municipality).  Partly it’s just derogation but it may have its origins from the presence of a large First Nations community, relative to other Valley towns (cf “the Valley”); that’s because not only of the long-standing Oblate mission which is how the town got its name, but also because of the inmigration of young natives from rural reserves east along the valley, especially once the residential school became integrated into the local public school in the late 1960s.  There’s also a strong prison-associated population now because of two federal contributions to the local economy in the 1970s at Ferndale (cf. above).
*“Whalley World” – a certain part of North Surrey.  I couldn’t tell you about Surrey girls here (partly because there's so many jokes, and partly because of the content of those jokes), but I can get away with Whalley World.  Whalley is the old name for the region of downtown Surrey the municipal councils have been fervently trying to change to Surrey Central for some now; but even “Surrey Central” sends chills down your spine if you know the associations.  “Surrey Centre” is what most people settle on when they’re being polite; “Whalley World” when they’re not..  Thing is, “Whalley World” refers to not only the place, in a general sense of going there as if you’d been to Mars (no, I’m not kidding).  Part of the association is the tacky pawnshops, greasy gyms et al that once typified the area and, in more recent times, the carnival of crackhouses and lowgrade prostitution and thievery/mischief that typifies the local, um, nightlife.  
*“Slurrey” refers to the whole municipality, generally excluding South Surrey/White Rock (i.e. south of 56th Ave/No 10 highway).  Surreyites have their own derisive term for the lowlands adjacent to the Pattullo Bridge – “the swamp” I think, or something close to that.  Surrey is "somewhat" known for having unlicensed vehicles and other stuff in the front yard of houses, and for being a cheek-to-jowl mix of urban and rural areas, as well as the most dominant Punjabi population and culture of all Vancouver's suburbs.  Some say the radical TV comedy the Trailer Park Boys should have been set in North Surrey.
*Then there's "East Van" and "Surrey", both unique places with certain flavour, specific identities and attitudes (darkly banal as they may be; reminiscent of Brooklyn and the Bronx relative to the respective local milieu) and generating a whole range of specialized slang that has influenced BC-wide English ("Surrey girl", which there should definitely not be a Wikipedia page for); "East Van" doesn't just mean the East Side of Vancouver, but an, um, unaffiliated "organization" of a certain "criminal motorcyle gang" (as the local media/police put it in their press releases to avoid mention of the "H.A.".  East Van is also a large part of local pop culture, whether in allusion to the neighbourhood boys who've "done good by doing bad" or just in ref to the lifestyle or political leaning (leftist, either unionite or lefto-green radical; but you can just as safely say "I live in East Van" without any of the other assocations being incurred on you (unless you fit the bill, of course).  See “the skids” elsewhere.
*“Gay Bay” – English Bay Beach in Vancouver, on the edge of the gay-intensive West End.  Usually used derisively (and not at all by the gay community).  There’s also “the Fruit Loop”, which is the park-sex part of Stanley Park near Second Beach/Lost Lagoon, which is used in (and was invented by) the gay community.
*”Canucklehead” - A diehard fan of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team, typically of the hoser persuasion.
*"Schiz" or "Skits" - short for Kitsilano, also known as Kits; short for schizophrenic/shizoid
*"ChillicOOtin" - folksy variant of Chilcotin, very cowboy-ish.
====Feedback====
Geographic nicknames belong at Canadian slang, not here. They don't constitute a distinct dialect. Bearcat 07:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There are few ditches left in Richmond.  Now that it's become a big city, it's only the rural areas that are absent storm sewers.  The term "Ditchland" has passed from use. Fishhead64 06:07, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Joke names and nicknames

message: Geographic nicknames belong at Canadian slang, not here. They don't constitute a distinct dialect. Bearcat 07:47, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: There are few ditches left in Richmond.  Now that it's become a big city, it's only the rural areas that are absent storm sewers.  The term "Ditchland" has passed from use. Fishhead64 06:07, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Feedback

message: *”Houston” – pronounced like Houston St in New York, not like Houston TX (i.e. ‘’Howston’’).
*”Seton Portage” – rhymes with porridge
*”Esquimalt” – not pronounced like French ‘’esquimault’’ at all, and with a different etymology; pron. ‘’ess-KWY-malt’’.
*’’T’wassen” or ’’Tawassen’’ – Tsawwassen.  Nobody says it like that (tsa- or sa-), unless you’re maybe saying it in Halqemeylem, or unless you’re self-consciously proper about pronouncing it, or you’re new to the province.
*A “Chinook” in BC vs one in Alberta, i.e. when referring to a wind or weather pattern, is a warm ‘’wet’’ southwesterly, also called a Pineapple Express.  Such winds, after they ‘’do’’ cross the Cordillara/Rockies, are the warm, dry “snow-eater” winds by which the term Chinook Wind is more better known.  In BC Chinook is pronounced ‘’tshihnuk’’- whereas in AB and across Canada it’s a French-influenced ‘’shihnuk’’ (a prononciation almost never heard in BC except by someone newly arrived)
*Agassiz - Aga-SEE.  This is the normal pronunciation but is unfamiliar to most Canadians unfamiliar with the name (originally Swiss?).
====Feedback====
Portage rhyming with porridge is not unknown elsewhere in Canada -- nobody, but nobody, ever pronounces the street in Winnipeg "Port-AHZH", frex. And nobody says "Port-AHZH la Prairie", either. In fact, outside of Quebec, portage almost always rhymes with porridge in a place name; it's usually only pronounced in the traditional French manner when it's used in the context of canoeing. And nobody pronounces Esquimalt as if they were speaking French...except maybe those whose first language is actually French. Minor local variants in pronunciation still don't define a distinct dialect. Bearcat 07:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Where in "soutwestern BC"?  "SuWAHssen" always sounded pretentious to our ears, and we were from Mission (I was born in '55), and our Vancouver links were the East End (12th & Clark); it was always (for us) TaWAHssen; pronouncing it with the 's' (either as ts- or s-) sounded hoity-toity.  Doubtless the Halqemeylem prononciation is more authentic, but not necessarily in English; and people I know who've lived in Tsawwassen said, as far as I can remember, TaWAHssen.  The other pronunciation always seemed someone "trying to hard" to pronounce it "correctly".  Similarly, though, "Shwartz Bay" is as common as Swartz Bay, although Islanders nearly always use the latter.Skookum1 07:27, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm from Victoria, so I can only go by what the folks in my Cedar Hill neighbourhood said.  And they said "Suh-WAH-sen."   Pronouncing the "T" always sounded uninformed to our ears.  Same with "shwartz" (I always assumed it was a mistake made by tourists). So I guess that given our different experiences, I don't think it's something one can make generalities about.  Both pronounciations are clearly acceptable in BC. Fishhead64 08:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Special pronunciations

message: Portage rhyming with porridge is not unknown elsewhere in Canada -- nobody, but nobody, ever pronounces the street in Winnipeg "Port-AHZH", frex. And nobody says "Port-AHZH la Prairie", either. In fact, outside of Quebec, portage almost always rhymes with porridge in a place name; it's usually only pronounced in the traditional French manner when it's used in the context of canoeing. And nobody pronounces Esquimalt as if they were speaking French...except maybe those whose first language is actually French. Minor local variants in pronunciation still don't define a distinct dialect. Bearcat 07:56, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Where in "soutwestern BC"?  "SuWAHssen" always sounded pretentious to our ears, and we were from Mission (I was born in '55), and our Vancouver links were the East End (12th & Clark); it was always (for us) TaWAHssen; pronouncing it with the 's' (either as ts- or s-) sounded hoity-toity.  Doubtless the Halqemeylem prononciation is more authentic, but not necessarily in English; and people I know who've lived in Tsawwassen said, as far as I can remember, TaWAHssen.  The other pronunciation always seemed someone "trying to hard" to pronounce it "correctly".  Similarly, though, "Shwartz Bay" is as common as Swartz Bay, although Islanders nearly always use the latter.Skookum1 07:27, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm from Victoria, so I can only go by what the folks in my Cedar Hill neighbourhood said.  And they said "Suh-WAH-sen."   Pronouncing the "T" always sounded uninformed to our ears.  Same with "shwartz" (I always assumed it was a mistake made by tourists). So I guess that given our different experiences, I don't think it's something one can make generalities about.  Both pronounciations are clearly acceptable in BC. Fishhead64 08:00, 23 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Feedback

message: *Cottage Country – an Ontarian term originally meant to mean the Muskokas now impinging its way into BC usage as a synonym for the Cariboo Plateau, which is very far from the true English-style cottage country of the Saanich Peninsula.  Formerly “cottage” in BC meant a specific style of small English-style dwelling, with only certain families referring to their “place” or “spread” as a “cottage”, and if they did so it implied a certain standard (or lack thereof) of building/accommodation.  More common was “cabin”, i.e. “I’m going to the cabin on the weekend”.  A cottage in an area more known for cabins, such as the Cariboo, might mean a more flimsily-built structure, less solid and reliable than a cabin, and probably not meant for wintering in.
*’’Westcoast’’ – as an adjective; coined by imported media editors/marketing types looking for a catchy marketing tag for Vancouver, i.e. the new “branding”.  Ultimately a term of Eastern Canadian perspective and incidentally overlooking the Interior.
*”two-four” – never heard in BC until long after the advent of 24-pack cases of beer; imported from the East.  Probably got imported because of Bob’n’Doug, along with “what a hoser, eh?”
*misprononciations of BC placenames, e.g. AbbotsFORD, DeaZe Lake vs Abbotsferd or Deese Lake, i.e. Dease Lake), Guildford with a ‘d’ (usually slurred ‘’Gilford’’)
*"the Fraser Valley" when used to refer to the Fraser Canyon or any area of the river's upper basin; in proper usage "the Fraser Valley" always means the Lower Mainland from Hope to Surrey/Delta.Skookum1 12:55, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Imported Abominations

message: Many living in BC know about the town of Point Roberts, Washington, which is on a little tongue of land jutting south of the 49th Parallel from Tsawassen, BC. I have never been there, but I'm wondering if the English spoken there is more Canadian than American, since just by geography (surrounded on three sides by water and BC on the north) they would seem to be more culturally connected to Canada than the mainland US.--MarshallStack 06:46, 27 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: About half of Point Roberts' permanent residents - or more - are Canadians, most of them "old stock" British Columbia (by which I mean it's not inundated by Eastern Canadians as certain Vancouver neighbourhoods are); and 80-90% of the bar customers are definitely Canadian. If someone was to hear a Canadian-style accent in Point Roberts most likely it's a Canadian. Despite their isolation and ongoing relationship with their neighbours, American Point Roberts folks sound pretty American; "sawry", and the drawled vowels and all that. Kids on the Point are bussed to the rest of Whatcom County daily and so are raised around other American kids (Whatcom County's accent isn't as Okie as other parts of WA, though, and most Whatcom County types interface with Greater Vancouver quite a bit). So I'd say no, the accent for some reason has stayed; I believe the same would also be true of Hyder AK, which is an isolated Alaskan town adjacent to Stewart, BC, at the head of the Portland Canal (which is the boundary in that area).Skookum1 02:41, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Canadian" English in Point Roberts, Washington? 

message: Copy-pasting my note from the Vancouver talk page here:	
Vancouver (pronounced [væːnˈkʰuv̥ɚ])" - Oh, really? Whose dialect? What's the source on this; if it's the Dictionary of Canadian English it's not to be trusted as it assumes all anglo-Canadians speak like TO/CBC. I know a bit of IPA and "væːn-" doesn't look right, nor does -v̥ɚ, and if you'll looke at the Vankewver vs Vankoover section you'll see that -kʰu- maybe isn't quite right for the middle syllable either. There's no one standard way to pronounced Vancouver, in fact; I don't think the IPA should be here; unless someone wants to put in the way a native English speaker from Vancouver actually says it; not how it is in a Toronto-produced dictionary; but that would require admitting that there's a regional variation that linguistic orthodoxy says doesn't exist (or won't study).Skookum1 01:06, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: I put in that pronunciation, because it is how I pronounce it, and I live on the west coast of B.C.  Denelson83  19:51, 28 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  IPA of "Vancouver" on city page 

message: Hello!  For those wishing to add Canadian words or other idiosyncracies in a dedicated article, I recently changed Canadianism redirect into an article.  This can also serve as a subarticle for Canadian English, Culture of Canada, et al.  Have at it! :) E Pluribus Anthony 05:24, 6 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: [[Canadianism]]!

message: "Many Torontonians have also adopted the Newfoundland English convention of using buddy (without a capital) as equivalent to that man (I like buddy's car.)."
Living in Mississauga (a mere 20 minutes away), and attending university in Toronto, I must say I've never heard a single person utter the word "buddy" in that sense. Perhaps somebody could expand and localise this phenomenon to a specific region or provide clearer examples? Kareeser|Talk! 15:53, 20 December 2005 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Buddy" in Toronto 

message: The current campaign commercial where you have JL speaking to the camera (not other one with the winter boot) he says "put some members in the parliament" and "do something about the corruption".  Usual English: Put some members in Parliament, do something about corruption.  
Is it only me this sounds stilted/over-written to?  Using the article when not necessary is a trait of second-language speakers to me.  Or is this normal in Ontarian English?Skookum1 20:16, 9 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The first is unusual. The second is reasonable to me, though – he's emphasizing he's talking about Liberal corruption rather than corruption in general. John FitzGerald 01:56, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

text: And then in last night's debate he asked people to vote for "the today's New Democrats." You could be onto something here. Perhaps it comes from growing up in Quebec – the articles would be idiomatic in French – but then his French isn't masterly. John FitzGerald 12:49, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I was wondering if it had something to do with his learning Chinese.  Using an unasked-for article in English is more normal if the speaker comes from a language where the article is mandatory, as in Greek ("The Mike goes to the Vancouver", i.e. even personal names have articles), but I have heard it sometimes where someone coming from, or influenced by, a language which has NO articles, such as Chinese or the old Chinook Jargon hereabouts, tries to over-correct their English by adding articles where they're not needed.  I've heard the extra-the thing in American hick-slang (trailer trash and Appalachia) but it just seemed really odd coming out of a native-speaker of English in Canada.Skookum1 19:09, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

text: I can't speak to the commercials, but something he said in the debates? I'd just chalk that up to "thinking on his feet; started to say one thing and then backtracked" rather than treating it as an example of some strange unverifiable theory about his language skills. You know, like, how people sometimes, um, hem and haw and start to say one thing and then have to back up and rephrase it when they're speaking...er, when they're talking extemporaneously, eh? Bearcat 19:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Jack Layton's affectations in TV commercial 

message: Or is it a diphthong, I'm not sure.  I was watching the news last night and in two separate items, from two separate mouths, I heard -ood elongated subtly from a straight '-ud' to 'u-uud'.  I don't have the IPA skills to record it properly here - it was like a doubling of the oo sound, and in the one case, the NDP candidate for British Columbia Southern Interior (where the young Tory who's in hospital is under charges for driving a Mercedes full of whiskey across the border...only in British Columbia, you say?).  That's ranch/orcharding country with simultaneously deep American and British expat/remittance history behind it; and the interviewed individual was either in Keremeos, Oliver, Grand Forks or Osoyoos, the last two being so close to the border you can spit across it from the bar (less than a mile); i.e. the ongoing culture of ranchland-North America is part of daily life, and most people in that area probably have met more people from Spokane and Boise than they have from Toronto.  But I guess, given the fact that any possible dialectical shifts in this area haven't been studied, then they don't actually exist (????).  And that people whose accents are influenced by (gasp) American accents can't be considered to have Canadian accents....but I can't figure out why it is, then, that so many Ontarians sound like they're from Ohio, despite the aboot thing and hoser-lexicons.
Then there's CBC English, which does have a formal pronunciation stylebook and even used to be more British-flavoured.  One thing I noticed last night was controver-see-al, as opposed to the usual Canglish controvershul and other over-controlled or forced syllables and consonantal distinctions.  Sure, broadcast English requires different enunciation, but over-careful pronunciation is a class-ist sort of thing; they do it all the time it's just that I noticed controver-see-al last night.Skookum1 18:07, 13 January 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A problem of Canadian life is that many important phenomena just aren't studied. And if they're not studied formally and reviewed by linguists I don't see why they should be included in this article. It's a shame, but any alternative seems worse. As for Ohio English, it is considerably more nasal than Ontario English and, as you note, it doesn't feature Canadian raising and Ontario English does, which would seem to quaify Ontario English as Canadian.  Ohioans also speak without the characteristic Canadian drone. And who said that "people whose accents are influenced by (gasp) American accents can't be considered to have Canadian accents"? All Canadian accents have been affected by American accents, I should think. All regional accents, period, I wouldn't be surprised to learn. Canadian and American accents are in fact "Canadian" and "American," anyway. The distribution of accents doesn't correspond very well to the border. In central and western Ontario, where I've spent most of my life, we're not always aware of that because upstate NY and MI speech are markedly different from ON speech. John FitzGerald 13:01, 16 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Drawls and diphthongs/CBC English

message: What does this mean: a more literal interpretation of long o sounds, such as in gone and fog? I don't think Torontonians say  and . Maybe the contributer meant that they don't merge caught and cot. Indefatigable 16:02, 1 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Literal interpretation of long ''o''  

message: Has anyone else come across a recent trend wherein the speaker uses the term anymore to mean now or nowadays? For example:
Most movies I see anymore are bad.
I have noticed it cropping up mostly in people from the Bancroft to Ottawa region, though oddly enough, I heard someone from Illinois use it the same way. --DarrenBaker 18:39, 10 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Anymore 

message: OK, so I'm not really a phonologist/phonetician, but ever since I took those classes I've been ridiculously aware of quirks in pronunciation. So here's something I've noticed: I'm a native English speaker from Ottawa, and it seems to me that my phonemic place of articulation for /l/ is dental. Not interdental like US theta, but dental, behind the teeth, like Canadian theta. Anybody else want to watch out for this in their own or someone else's speech? Please note, I really, really do not mean Alveolar; I mean using the blade of the tongue against my teeth. It seems like it's everywhere except for after (palato-)alveolar obstruents.--TheLurker 06:55, 22 February 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Place of articulation of l?