Obligatory Simpsons reference. (Though different pronunciation, I think.) Here in Illinois and other parts of the Midwest you will sometimes hear “melk” for “milk.” The Chicagoans I grew up with (except for one who we playfully teased) didn’t do this, but it’s heard in the area.
It is not unstressed in “bungle”.
If you’re talking about the first syllable, that’s not notated as a schwa. It’s an /ʌ/ or, “uh.”
ETA: Actually, it seems to be notated both ways. Some dictionaries have /ʌ/, others have /ə/ for the first syllable, so never mind. In English phonology, I’m used to only calling it a schwa if it’s in an unstressed position (and some dictionaries define it as such in regards to English.)
Blame “The Philadelphia Story”!
Kate, Cary and Jimmy all had typical Penna accents, right?
(In all seriousness, I was once at a social event for a cross-border moot and got talked at for some time by a law student from “Penn”. I think he thought it was beneath him to say the “University of Pennsylvania”. He had what struck me as a very noticeable accent. )
36 years ago in the Canadian Army. But, I am quite willing to say that in my dotage I’ve been reprogrammed by American media and that I am mistaken especially given that the minimal interactions I ever had with officers all involved the term ‘Sir’.
Lord knows I would be.
You live in Montreal, right? Can you hear the difference between Mary, marry, and merry?
Here’s a related story:
Travelling in Europe many years ago, single mom and two boys, 11 and 8 (I was the 11 year old), the locals assumed we were British, even though we’re from USA.
Mom had red hair, we kids were blond and “well behaved.” Hence we couldn’t be Americans LOL.
I grew up in Newfoundland, the Tranna area, and now Ottawa. There’s an Irish ditty that plays on these words sounding the same, with the chorus:
Mary Mack’s mother’s makin’ Mary Mack marry me,
My mother’s makin’ me marry Mary Mack;
I’m gonna marry Mary for my Mary to take care o’ me,
We’ll all be makin’ merry when I marry Mary Mack.
That’s how I pronounce them, with the same vowel sound in all three.
Completely untrue in my experience. I was in Quebec City in October, and encountered no hostility at all to my execrable, minimal French, nor my English. Even the monoglot Francophones I encountered gave me a cheerful “bonne journee!”, despite being unable to hold a conversation beyond hand gestures and pantomime. Granted, I made a point of opening with French phatic phrases; a postal clerk told me that most Quebecois would happily speak English to tourists, so long as you made some acknowledgement that you were in a French-speaking country.
A few weeks ago a couple of us jumped into a taxi in Mexico. Apparently the driver was fairly new and had to call his dispatcher to confirm the fare. My friend understood Spanish and heard the dispatcher tell the driver to charge us double because we were American. We informed the driver we were Canadian so he charged us the going rate.
When I tried to leave a tip he wouldn’t take it, and apologized for offending us.
We weren’t offended, just amused.
How about this?
I grew up in Texas, but have lived the majority of my adult life in the Midwest. I still have a Texas accent, but somewhat smoothed away, except when I go back to visit family, and it gets sharpened up again. A few weeks ago, I spent a week in Barcelona, and two different times, I was asked by locals if I was Canadian! I clearly do not sound like a Canadian. My twelve year old (who is conversationally fluent in Spanish) daughter gave me endless grief on my pronunciation of quatro por fovore every time we entered a restaurant.
Should I be offended for being mistaken for a Canadian?
What “French-speaking country” did either of you think you were you in?
Canada; it is a French speaking country. 
No, Canada is an officially bilingual country. Not the same thing at all. The specific comment I was responding to was “a postal clerk told me that most Quebecois would happily speak English to tourists, so long as you made some acknowledgement that you were in a French-speaking country”. So how about the postal clerk make some acknowledgement that he was in an English-speaking country, instead of making our English-speaking visitor jump through hoops to prove that he was worthy of even being spoken to?
That was a rhetorical question, because we know the answer, don’t we? The real reason is the same reason that Canada’s official bilingualism has many traffic signs in both English and French even in provinces where virtually no one speaks French, and even in places where no one at all is unilingually French. Except in Quebec, of course. There, the traffic signs are exclusively in French only, despite the alleged bilingualism of the country, despite the number of foreign English-speaking (mostly American) tourists who are likely to genuinely not understand what the signs are saying, in some cases potentially jeopardizing their safety. But it’s worth it, n’est pas? It’s the same reason the Quebec legislature is called (in French) the “National Assembly”, or that they’ve humorously tried several times (and failed) to join country-level international organizations.
A better question is, do Americans get offended when they travel to other countries and folks are nice to them, mistaking them for Canadians? 
So much to unpack here. sigh. Lets put aside the, frankly misplaced, anger at things like bilingual stop signs (and French’s danger to tourists) to directly address what I think is probably the heart of your ire; Quebec identity.
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Quebec (like a lot of other eastern Canadian provinces) has a long history as a political entity. Quebec city was founded over 400 years ago by Samuel de Champlain. 400 years is a long time for any society to exist without expecting a development of a strong and unique sense of identity.
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Quebec is also the sole French speaking majority province of Canada and Quebec cultivates their society to serve the francophone majority; not to evoke anglophone frustration/anger. Regardless of one’s political beliefs, you must agree that it is essential that Quebeckers are allowed to endure as a francophone society, no?
Now I, personally, don’t believe that francophone Quebec is a society currently in danger, but this is due to the high importance Quebeckers have historically put in ensuring the integration of French into all areas of Quebec culture. By large, linguistic minority communities do integrate and participate inside wider Quebec society.
- Nation, national, etc. I think Harper got it right here (never though I’d type those words): “that the Québécois* form a nation within a united Canada” Taking into account the distinctiveness and age of Quebec society, on what grounds would you deny that they form a nation?
*Harper was a tad sneaky in the English translation by keeping the term Québécois which (in English) implies an undivided ethnic nationhood (like with “First Nations”); in French the term Québécois simply implies an undivided provincial nationhood.
47 years a Canadian, never heard a Canadian pronounce it that way unless they were from Britain.
Only if you were in the army or something and taught to say it that way. Most people who don’t have that experience pronounce it “loo-tenn-ent”
I just don’t know what country you people are talking about. Are bilingual traffic signs really that ubiquitous? I can’t remember the last one I saw. It’s been awhile since I’ve been to Ottawa, I’m sure there are some there.
I did a Google Image search on “Vancouver traffic signs,” they’re all in English. Windsor? English. St. John’s, English.
The only place I can think of seeing bilingual road signs are in national parks, but even there that’s just the signs giving directions (Scenic Route/Route Touristique --> sort of thing) and not the stop signs or bridge subject to icing sorts of things.
Nope.
I spend a lot of time down south, in fact I just got back from a family trip to North Carolina. We spent a couple days in Chapel Hill, then the weekend in Carolina Beach with a short stop in Gettysburg, PA on the way home. Most people don’t notice we are Canadian… but my wife likes to let everyone know anyway!
I used to have a pretty heavy Ottawa Valley accent(way heavier than the guy in the clip, I sounded a lot like Bob McKenzie) but it has faded over the 30 years since I moved into the city when I went to university … I can still turn it on when I want though!
At dinner last night, the waiter struck up a long conversation with me about the UNC Tarheels and how big a fan he was. I didn’t have the heart to tell him the shirt was a gift and I prefer Duke. 