FWIW, here is my experience. I was born and lived my first 31 years in the US (Philly, NY, Urbana IL) and the subsequent 48 in Canada (Montreal). I still cannot tell if someone is Canadian unless they are Newfies (who sound vaguely Irish) unless there is some dead giveaway (e.g zed for zee or maybe abowt for about), but most Canadians seem to detect instantly that I am American. Obviously, I am all too familiar with a French Canadian accent, but I’m talking about native English speakers. It is just that among all the varieties of American English I’ve heard, the Canadian fades into the background. Nowhere near as distinctive as Boston or NY.
One minor point: I’ve known two people who spent years in Philadelphia swear I could not possible have grown up there. I think they are just expecting the South Philly accent that my father had and my mother didn’t. And I mostly lived just a two blocks from where she grew up (and went to same elementary school she did and even had some of the same teachers).
I like this legend, as it is soft and gentle in tone. Very Canadian. It doesn’t have the bombast that any American legend would have had. “…And he was jumped by forty ferocious warriors, and fought them all off with his hatchet!”
The Wiki article gives us an even more elaborate possible example of US Northeast Cockney from the mouth of Tony Curtis, this time in an Ali Baba flick:
“Dis is da palace of my fadah, and yondah lies da Valley of da Sun.”
Gosh, I know I do. And Ohioans don’t all sound the same. Cleveland and parts east are more like western New York; as you move south, they start sounding like Southerners.
People from BC are generally indistinguishable from people in the Pacific Northwest, accent-wise. Alberta and Ontario, likewise, are pretty indistinguishable from the less embellished Northeastern accents (meaning: the more newscastery versions, nobody is going to sound like they’re from the Bronx when I say “northeastern”). All this is aside from minor shibboleths like “zed”, of course. Quebec is obviously its own thing. I haven’t met many people from Saskatchewan or the northern provinces, so I can’t say, but some Manitobans can sound like extreme American Midwestern accents. Newfoundlanders* are the ones that generally have the really recognizable accents. I’ve also heard mixed accents from Nova Scotians and New Brunswick…ians, but generally they don’t sound much different from northeastern US people.
Originally this was “Newfies”, but then I googled and it’s considered a slur/mocking term? I’ve only ever encountered it as playful slang.
I went to a city on the Canadian border and was able to spot various Canadians because of how they talked. Their accents and rate of speech being slower were giveaways.
I’ve noticed a lot of Canadian actors who became popular on American TV have had no noticeable accent, such as Lorne Greene, Raymond Burr, William Shatner, and Michael J. Fox. However, I’ve watched the 1971 James Garner series Nichols and noticed Margot Kidder saying “aboat.”
No, Canadians pronounce “sorry” the way it’s spelled. A “sari” is a South Asian female garment.
I never really realized that there was a national difference in how “pasta” is pronounced. I’ve often heard the “ah” version of “pasta” but never thought of it as particularly American, but perhaps it is. Since I pronounce it correctly with the short “a”, like your daughter is now doing, to her credit, it tends to confirm your statement.
But you’re certainly correct about “aboot” – no one says that, except possibly Newfies. But there is as you say a subtle but distinct difference in the Canadian vs. typically American pronunciation that’s called Canadian raising. In the sound files at the link, the second to last (“bowed, bout”) contrasts how an American and a Canadian would say the “bout” syllable as in “about”, and the last one (“about, a boot, a boat”) shows exactly how a Canadian would pronounce “about”.
It’s been said that many prominent American newscasters tend to sound “Canadian”, especially the national ones where networks don’t want strong regional accents.
Appelle is a conjugated verb, not a noun. The noun would be appellation; same as in this other language that got the word from French, yanow? And it’s equally formal in French, it’s something one would be more likely to encounter in grammar lessons or in a police report than in everyday speech.
I have a few Canadian friends and, really, it seems to me that saying there’s Canadian accent is about as broad as saying there’s an American accent. But just how America has a New England Accent, Southern Accent, Texan, Mid-West, etc. It’s the same for Canadians. One friend just over the border sounds almost indistinguishible from an American, but I do catch him saying “aboot” or “eh” types of things every so often. Obviously, those I know who are French Canadian have their own accent, and those from Western Canada sound different too.
In all of that, it’s always interesting to me that people with accents often underestimate how thick their accents are. My ex was European, and she insisted she had a very light accent; it was about medium. A friend of mine from India asked me not too long ago how her accent was; again, she too was surprised when I told her it was actually pretty thick. Hell, I forget myself that I have a few regional things that sometimes people point out, otherwise I’m generally unaware that some things I say sound any different from people around me. So, I wouldn’t be shocked if many Canadians like the OP may have light to moderate accents, not really feel like they sound any different, but those few small differences that are so often exaggerated might stick out to an American.
When my son was 3-4 years old (a year or two ago), he watched a lot of TV programs that I could tell were produced in Canada – Super Why (Ontario), Paw Patrol (BC), and more obviously Caillou (Québec). The voice actors apparently had learned to tone down the Canadian “ou,” but they gave themselves away with the “o” sound in words like got, which they pronounced with the lips tense and almost rounded, quite unlike the typical American “gaht,” a looser, smiling-mouth sound that is especially pronounced in California but is really the standard in the US nowadays.
I’m always surprised when I find out someone I know is Canadian. The Canadians I know don’t have a different accent (that I can detect) from people native to the area I live and grew up in. I’m from deep South Texas, and I hear more of an accent in people from East Texas than in people from Canada.
A few years ago, I had about my only SDMB argument, with hibernicus, about this (actually, about British pronunciation of “pasta,” which can resemble the Canadian one) – and I came away realizing I’d analyzed the situation incorrectly.
This is what’s going on: Neither Brit/Can nor US English includes the mid-vowel “a” sound on native Italian (and Spanish). So, English speakers must approximate.
There is one English phoneme – the sound written by linguists a an “ae” ligature, and found in “can,” “Sam,” and “fat.” We’ll call it “ae.”
There’s a second English phoneme, the sound in “father,” “stomp” (by Californians, anyway), and, by many Brits, “can’t.” We’ll call it “ah” (though “aw” might work as well).
The Italian “a” is pronounced with the mouth positioned about halfway between these two sounds. So, there’s nothing better or worse about which sound one chooses to approximate it.
But the average normal “ae” sound among Brits and Canadians is a little closer to it than their “ah” is, so they usually pick “ae” – while the opposite applies to most Americans. Therefore, it sounds funny to Americans when their hear a Brit say “pasta” to rhyme with “fat.” Little do they know that their use of “pawsta/pahsta” is equally “incorrect,” in that it’s an approximation of the Romance mid-vowel.
