Do us Canadians really have an accent to you Americans?

In My Humble Opinion
61

“Toque.”

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Peter Jennings and Morley Safer were prominent examples.
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John Roberts, too. He’s from Toronto.

That said, no, they don’t sound exactly Canadian. Canadians on screen - be they newscasters or actors - do learn to avoid obvious Canadian pronunciations, like the diphthongs that give us away, or “sore-ee” or saying “during” as if it starts with a J. Of course, moving to L.A. and living there a few years will change your accent, but if it doesn’t, you will be reminded not to say it that way. Matthew Perry enjoyed telling the story of his first season on “Friends” where every now and then he thought he said something right and the rest of the cast and crew would bust up, saying “Yooo’re from Trawna, eh?”

Anglophone Canadian accents don’t vary a lot by region except the Maritime and Newfoundland accents, but they do tend to show a strong difference between urban and rural accents. People in small town Canada DO have remarkably strong Canadian accents, and the accent will be reinforced the longer you live in the sticks. If you watch a Canadian reality show, like the Cops ripoff “You’re Under Arrest!” (which has an even better theme song; it’s a rock riff with a guy screaming “You are under arrest! You are under arrest!” over and over) the accents are often comically Canadian, even to my ears. I’m talking Bob and Doug Mackenzie, or an American comic making fun of Canadian accents. It’s that strong.

Canadian actors and talking heads, I can’t help but notice, are usually NOT from small towns, but tend to be from big cities. I just picked names out of my head at random and looked them up on IMDB:

Rachel McAdams: London, Ontario; went to university in Toronto
Ryan Gosling (McAdams’s husband): London, Ontario (no, they didn’t know each other; its a big town)
Mike Myers: Toronto, Ontario
The Shat: Montreal, Quebec
Sarah Chalke: Ottawa, Ontario
Ryan Reynolds: Vancouver, BC
Seth Rogen: Vancouver, NC
Ellen Page: Halifax, Nova Scotia
Jim Carrey: Newmarket, Ontario; raised in Burlington, both Toronto 'burbs
Will Arnett: Toronto, Ontario
Nathan Fillion: Edmonton, Alberta
Sarah Gadon (I liked her in 11.22.63): Toronto, Canada
Carrie Ann Moss: Burnaby, BC, a suburb of Vancouver

I managed to get to Barry Pepper, who is from nowheresville, BC. It does seem though that Canadian actors are drawn from large cities, and of course being born in a big city gives you access to opportunity being born in Yellowknife doesn’t. (It is especially noteworthy how many Second City alumni were born in or near Toronto - Myers, Rick Moranis, Catherine O’Hara, Martin Short,) Granted, most Canadians do live in large cities, but not almost all of them. Perhaps their lack of strong Canadian accent helps, I don’t know.

62

I grew up in Western New York and said “eh” occasionally. I continued to do so in Florida except people were always like “wow, you’re Canadian” :rolleyes: While I was aware that supposedly Canadians used “eh” more than Americans, up until that point I had assumed that every dialect used it a little, at least to the degree that it would be unremarkable to hear someone say it once in awhile.

63

New Brunswickers :cool:

64

I remember hearing the impressionist Rich Little, who is from Ottawa, tell about one time early in his career when he was imitating Jack Benny, when he said one of Benny’s catchphrases and it came out as, “Now, cut that oot!”

65

Not at all. This is actually quite a deep Canadian issue. The CBC says that “tuque” is preferred but both spellings are used, plus a third variant, “touque”. Complicating matters is the fact that some believe these are just spelling variants, but others believe that “tuque” and “toque” actually refer to different styles of hats, with “tuque” being correct for hoser hats and “toque” to certain obsolete hats of ancient times with modern usage referring to the chef’s hat. If Canadians weren’t so polite they’d probably be getting into fisticuffs over this question. :slight_smile:

I wasn’t referring to those that actually were Canadian, I was saying that the general neutral accent of most national newscasters has been compared to the Canadian. Which fact would certainly make actual Canadians well qualified for the job!

66

You’re not suggesting that Canada is centred around Tarranah are you? There are other parts of the country, ya know…:smiley:

67

Yes, you people (Canadians) have accents! (I’m particularly fond of women with Canadian accents!)

I grew up in a small town just south of Buffalo, NY. I could leave my house and be in Canada in about forty minutes. (It was something I did often between the ages of 19 and 21…) I watched Canadian TV and listened to Canadian radio. I can pick you out no problem in under a minute, easy. I now live in Wisconsin, but still get plenty of Canadian accent through HGTV and Nick Jr.

Fun fact, I asked the first Minnesotan I ever met if he was Canadian. (Which I thought was weird, because we were in the US Army.) He was incredulous, but I was like, dude you sound just like them. Now, being in Wisconsin, I meet a lot more people from Minnesota and to me they sound like Canadians with the “Canadian” dial cranked a half turn higher, while Wisconsinites sound like Canadians with the dial turned a quarter turn lower.

68

I’ve heard that Courteney Cox would also occasionally slip and deliver a line in her native Alabaman accent.

69

“Toque” was the answer to a question on a recent episode of Jeopardy!. Both the contestant and Alex Trebek (who is, interestingly enough, Canadian) pronounced it as “toke.” On a Jeopardy! discussion board that I frequent, a huge discussion quickly ensued, with some people saying, “Who the hell pronounces it toke? Everyone knows it’s took!” And other people saying “What do you mean took? It’s toke, who doesn’t know that?”

The upshot of the discussion being that there seem to be two different pronunciations, and almost no one, whichever pronunciation they used, had ever heard the other one.

For the record, I’m a toke man.

Wait, that doesn’t sound quite right…

70

I grew up in Northern New York and said “eh” quite a bit.

71

Adding to your list:

Dan Aykroyd: Ottawa
Jay Baruchel: Ottawa
Rachel Blanchard: Toronto
Michael Cera: Brampton, a suburb of Toronto and a major city itself
Tommy Chong: Edmondton
Emmanuelle Chriqui: Montreal
Hayden Christensen: Vancouver
Enrico Colantoni: Toronto
Elisha Cuthbert: Calgary
Nina Dobrev: Toronto
Mia Kirshner: Toronto
Kristin Kreuk: Vancouver
Evangeline Lilly: Fort Saskatchewan, a suburb of Edmonton
Shay Mitchell: Toronto
Sandra Oh: Nepean, a suburb of Ottawa
Anna Paquin: Winnipeg
Alison Pill: Toronto
Cobie Smulders: Vancouver
Donald Sutherland: Saint John
Emily VanCamp: Port Perry, a suburb of Toronto

And I found one small town Canadian: Tricia Helfer, who’s from Donalda, Alberta

72

Robert McNeil of the famous McNeil/Leher News show on PBS never quite shook all of his Canukian accent. Likewise, famous singer/songwriter Joni Mitchell

73

I don’t know if I would call it an accent but there are obvious signs that a person is Canadian in the pronunciation and use of certain words that are a clear tip off.

I worked for a company in Oregon making fish food in the days that salmon ranching was booming in BC, mid to late 1980s, and we employed a sales lady who lived there. Her accent was indistinguishable from an Oregonian until she used certain words.

She did say the aboot rather than about. Our personal time off from work was vacation, hers was going on holiday. To us a holiday was a specifically set aside day like Memorial Day or Christmas.

She would say shedule and we would say skedule when discussing the schedule. Things like that. Otherwise no accent different from Oregonian at all. Just the way some words were pronounced and slightly different sentence structure sometimes.

There are way, way more accents internal to the US that are different from each other than Canadian is different to normal US speak. For the most part there is no difference between western US and western Canada accents.

74

Those, and the “pasta” with a short “a” are all Britishism, which we Americans have dropped or never acquired. Do Canadians do the “group = they not it” thing as in:

“IBM are a corporation that sells computers and computer services”

instead of:

"IBM is a corporation… "

75

70%-80% of the population in Canada lives in Toronto or around the area.

76

LOL Canadians do not sound Minnesotan. Like I said before, most young people sound californian

77

I watched the first couple episodes of The Amazing Race Canada and the accents are plain and I’d never guess they were Canadian except for the occasional aboot. People from northern Wisconsin and Minnesota have much more distinctive accents. I had a more distinctive accent from Wisconsin growing up than the contestants on TAR Canada.

78

“out and about the house”

I don’t think I sound too Canadian but who knows?

79

Is this some kind of Canajun joke?

According your percentages, at least 25 million Canadians live “in Toronto or around the area”. Does that sound right to you?

80

Not really. It’s like the cover the New Yorker ran one time that showed a map of the US. It consisted of New York City, and some sort of west coast somewhere. Toronto is the same way. :smiley:

When I used to travel a lot I tended to find that the farther west you went, the more they hated Toronto. Vancouver seems to have a palpable hatred of Toronto and its Big Money self-centeredness, mitigated only by the fact that they’re too stoned to really care.

I hear it sometimes, but never use it myself. It’s certainly not universal. FWIW, I think the usage in your examples would be considered flat-out wrong and never actually used that way. “IBM is a corporation” – always. The variances in usage are in the context of “IBM are going to {do something}” vs. “IBM is going to {do something}” the difference being whether you regard them as a group of people or an institutional entity. Both would be considered correct but I think the latter with “is” is much more common.