Re: Canadians and their English

Anonymous — Thu, 19 Apr 2007 05:54:21 GMT

General Canadian English is extremely similar to General American English. However, there are a number of differences between the two dialects. Firstly, GCE (General Canadian English) exhibits a linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically, the diphthong âaiâ--as in "by" or "lie"--is raised before voiceless consonants (t, k, p, s, f); by contrast, this diphthong is not raised before other consonants (v, z, d, b, l, m, n, r, etc). Thus, by using Canadian Raising, the words in the following word pairs can be pronounced differently: ride and write, five and fife, and rise and rice.
The diphthong "au," as in "loud," is commonly raised before the consonants "t," "th," "ch," and "s." This diphthong is not raised before the consonants "d," "z," "n," and "j." As was pointed out, the word "about" sounds like "a boat"... well, to American ears, that is. In General American English, the diphthong "ai" is not raised before any consonant, nor is the diphthong "au." Yet, this raising has been occurring in various areas of the U.S., and it has spread quite far.

Another difference between these dialects is that, in GCE, the vowel "o" is always pronounced as "o" before the consonant "r." Therefore, âsorryâ is pronounced sor-ee, âborrowâ is pronounced bor-row, and âsorrow,â sor-row. In General American English, the vowel "o" is sometimes pronounced as the vowel "a"--as in "father"--before the consonant "r." In GAE (General American English), "sorry" is pronounced sar-ee, "borrow" is pronounced bar-row, and âsor-rowâ is pronounced sar-row. This, nevertheless, isn't very common in GAE; in fact, I canât think of any other word that is pronounced with the vowel âa,â other than sorrow, borrow, and sorry.

Many Canadians pronounce the word "marry" as "merry." In GAE, âmarryâ is pronounced with the vowel âae.â

In GCE, "pasta," "mazda," "lava," "drama," âYahooÂ®,â "taco," and other similar words are pronounced with the vowel "ae." In GAE, these words are pronounced with the vowel "a.â In GCE, on the other hand, these and few other foreign words are pronounced with the vowel "a": macho, Guatemala, Bach, and karate. Why is this so? I sure as heck don't know; it's an anomaly.

Of course, let's not forget Canadian lexicon. In Canada, "pop" is universally used as a term for a carbonated beverage. Even in the U.S., "pop" is used quite widely. It's largely used in the Midwest, Upper Midwest, and Northwest. As well, many Canadians refer to candy bars as "chocolate bars."
In GCE, the idioms "in hospital" and "to university" are used, in lieu of the American idioms "in the hospital" and "to the university," which includes a definite article. So, one may say, "I'm going to have my surgery in hospital," or "I'm going to attend university during the fall."

The last letter of the Canadian alphabet, "zed," is different from the last letter of the American alphabet, "zee."

Well, this is pretty much all I know about GCE.

Re: One dictionary says...

MrPedantic — Sun, 19 Dec 2004 11:59:03 GMT

Another good find!

It's a pity that neither Ora's nor Erika's paper looks at the history of 'too [adj] (of) a [noun]'. From the point of view of analysis, much seems to depend on whether or not 'too [adj] a [noun]' is an ellipsis for 'too [adj] of a [noun]'.

(For instance, if it is an ellipsis, we can then discount the admittedly remote possibility that 'a' isn't an indefinite article at all, but a Teutonic prefix of some kind, or a truncation of 'of'. Though the Dutch version in Ora's paper seems in any case to rule this out.)

I haven't yet been able to find either version in a Middle English text.

How is the 'of' version regarded in the US? It's not used in standard BrE, but I'd hesitate to say it doesn't lurk in a dialect somewhere. The googles seem all to relate to 'colloquial/non-standard' contexts. Ora says that 'in some (more colloquial) dialects fronting of the extended AP triggers of-insertion'; but not whether of-insertion is an older form retained in dialect, or a new form that has developed in dialect.

The latter would be the more interesting case (hypercorrection? or parallelism with other 'of a' structures?); the former more helpful...

MrP

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Re: Canadians and their English

Re: One dictionary says...