Unemployment insurance and alcohol have their own special languages in Canada. You cash your pogey cheque and go buy a two-four of Blue (Labatt’s Blue), or Ex (Molson Export) (a case of 24 beers) or a 26er or 40-ouncer of rye (whiskey). Note that they still call it a 40-ouncer even though the country went metric in the mid-'70s.
That reminds me, up there it was a cheque for all my life (don’t know if they’ve changed it by now), while down here it’s always been a check.
My grandmother always used the terms “serviette” and “chesterfield” - I hadn’t heard them in ages.
I’ve never heard anyone say “Broadloom.” Actually, I never hear anyone say “wall to wall” either. People just say “carpet.”
I’ve never heard a Canadian say the word “chesterfield” unless they were at least twenty years older than me. (I’m 35.) I’d never heard of the word “Parkade” until I read some really bad article about alleged Canadianisms. Then I started noticing the word everywhere, on parking garages. But I’ve still never heard the word spoken.
I travel in the USA a lot, and the thing that always gives me away is saying “pop.” Americans generally say “soda” or, in the South, “coke.” There are some northern states where “pop” is common, though.
Another one is “power bar” versus “power strip.” In the USA, an apparatus that plugs into a wall outlet and then has a bar-shaped extension with four or more outlets on it is called a “power strip.” In Canada, it’s usually called a “power bar.”
Of course, in Canada, if you order a “Caesar,” you have ordered an alcoholic drink similar to a Bloody Mary but made with Clamato juice (another Canadianism.) If you want a Caesar salad, you have to say “Caesar salad” unless it’s in a context where you are obviously talking about a salad choice.
Oh, and by the way; Canadian and American beers are the same and anyone who says otherwise is clueless.
OK, but the very first two classified ads I randomly clicked on in the Toronto Star Homes section on-line tonight, both mentioned “broadloom” (you’ll have to trust me, I admit, but they really were the 1st two, and random).
Be careful here. This has raised more than a few spirited (pun fully intended) discussions on this board. But it raises another point the OP wanted to know.
Seems the Americans believe rye and Canadian whisky are two different things. In other words, in the USA, Canadian Club and Crown Royal and Corby’s and so on are not called rye. They are called Canadian whiskies. But they’re not rye.
Being Canadians, of course, we know what rye is: Canadian Club and Crown Royal and Corby’s and the rest.
Americans, I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree on this one. Here in Canada, “rye” is the generic term for the spirit known by such brand names as Canadian Club, Crown Royal, Corby’s, and anything else that you might prefer to call Canadian whisky. We call it rye; we have done so for years. So, we will be glad to welcome you to our fine pubs, as long as you’re not disappointed when you ask for rye and get something different from what you expected.
Oh hell, we’ll welcome you anyway. And we’ll be happy to introduce you to rye-and-gingers.
Years ago, i ordered iced tea during a trip through Canada and was served hot tea poured over ice. (I have no idea whether that was some rare regional problem or whether it was the way “iced tea” was served in Canada in the early 1960s.)
When you order iced tea anywhere that I have been in the U.S., the tea (whether originally brewed or simply mixed from some odd powder) is chilled thoroughly before it is served, and ice and a lemon wedge is added to the already cold drink. The closest thing to an exception would be that in some places in the South, an order for iced tea is presumed to be an order for sweet tea, so a 16 ounce glass will contain, instead of a lemon wedge, about eight ounces of dissolved sugar.
Pouring hot brewed tea over ice cubes (if it still happens or if it ever happened outside the one restaurant where I encountered it) is just odd.
Hot tea in the British fashion in the U.S. is rather rare, with few people actually adding cream or sugar to it. Slightly more common is Chinese style*, where the brew is served without additives.
*(Or, at least, the Chinese American restaurant style, where I have never seen cream or sugar offered–I have no idea how it is served in China.)
Only if one deliberately excludes the Belgian brews to keep from embarrassing the Germans.
But this is exactly how my parents and their friends would make iced tea back in the 1960s. It was tea, brewed in a pot, and poured hot over ice. I can still remember watching my mother make it, and the ice crackling as the boiling tea was poured on top.
Nowadays, nobody makes it this way; much less my mother, who is no longer with us. We either buy it already made, or we mix it from a powder. But it was how iced tea was made, at least in southern Ontario (allowing for regionalisms), in the 1960s. Your experience wasn’t unusual for the time.
I’m (almost) 28, and I grew up calling them chesterfields. That’s certainly the influence of my parents, who are slightly less than twenty years older than you. Now I almost exclusively use couch.
I’ll also call any multi-level parking structure a parkade. I don’t really know any other term for them.
What Yanks are you talking about? I am not surprised that there are some Yanks who are confused about Canadian whiskey, but I always thought that Canadian=rye (based on the content, not some magical name change at the border).
Did I just grow up too close to the border? “Chocolate bar” to me is the regular usage. “Candy bar” sounds stupid. A chocolate bar is “candy,” though, in that chocolate is a type of “candy” in the general sense, not in that it’s “candied something” or hardened sugar.
Thank you so much for that link. It was exactly that sort of site I looked for, and couldn’t find, among the many references listed in both the General Questions stickie and refdesk.com.
