I was raised in the same city Nathan Fillion was. His accent, if any, is my accent. I do not hear one in his voice. Yet I’m told I have one and he doesn’t. It’s weird.
No, but the caricature is so far off. I’ve been listening to a podcast from a prof at York University lately, and I can occasionally pick up the drawn out vowel because I’m listening for it, but I have to pay attention to find them. We don’t all wander around complaining about how we lost our toque aboot the hoose, eh.
Part of the problem in explaining the Canadian pronunciation of those words is that to do it accurately one would have to use IPA symbols. There’s no way to show it correctly while using normal English spelling. Experts in phonology can pick out all sorts of distinctions that simply can’t be explained in ordinary English spelling.
Actually, my husband has recently lost his toque somewhere in the house. It may have fallen behind the dryer but we just can’t see it, and haven’t moved it to find out.
In my opinion, TSNs Chris Cuthbert has a very pronounced Canadian accent. In this clip, the second commentator (I think it’s Ray Ferraro?) actually says “about”, and damn if he doesn’t make it sound like the stereotype!
Cuthbert is from Toronto, but I think was out west (Edmonton?) for a large part of his career, and Ferraro is from BC. In watching post-game interviews, I’ve noticed that both Carey Price and Josh Gorges (both from BC) tend to have this accent as well, but not nearly as strongly as Cuthbert. I tend to associate the “about” thing with people from out west, but I know I’ve heard it elsewhere as well.
Well, it’s possible he’s worked on it, that’s common enough for actors. He doesn’t seem to have any regional accent that I can hear. He just sounds generic North American to me.
The best Canadian accent I’ve ever heard from an American is Jerry Nelson’s voice for Gobo from Fraggle Rock. It’s a mite thicker than most you’ll hear an actual person using, but it’s accurate. (If you happen to catch an episode, pay attention when he says ‘Outer Space’ - not an oot to be heard.)
Michael Hogan in Battlestar Galactica has a really strong Canadian accent. In a cast full of Canadian actors, he’s the only one that immediately stands out as Canadian to me – the others didn’t ping on my accent radar at all.
Edit: Well, maybe Tahmoh Penikett. But Michael Hogan was like CANADIAN IN SPACE to me.
Speech to type programs heard the r and l in Charles just fine too, unlike my attempts to get DNS 10 to understand the word “calm,” so I’m inclined to believe the sounds are really there.
From the same show, Jamie Bamber sounded… off to me, when I watched the Miniseries. Then I found out he also played Archie Kennedy in the Hornblower movies, pictured him with an English accent, a goofy smile, and a serious ponytail, and it clicked.
Ditto to watching the main character in 21, though that may be because I watched him in Across the Universe first. In both cases, their accents just seemed ever so slightly “off” somehow in a way I couldn’t peg.
And to me as well. Which is where the confusion about these mythical Canadian accents comes in.
Ah, but is he wandering aboot complaining about it?
Do you here it here in the reporter’s use of the word “out”? (It’s the first clip I found for Youtube search of CBC News.) That’s the sound we’re talking about. It may be mythical as in legendary, but it’s not mythical as in fictitious.
And here’s an example from Trailer Park Boys. (WARNING: If you let the clips play, eventually they will lead to strong language.) Note her pronunciation of “about.” At the very beginning, the intro has a character using the word “out” with a strong Canadian rising to it, but he (Bubbles) is a very accented character to begin with, so I didn’t want to cite him. If you want to hear it click here. Julian has a much milder-to-possibly non-existent raising in the “out” in this clip although I hear it more in other clips with him (I don’t really hear it the first time he says “out,” but kind notice a quirkiness in the vowel the second time he says it.). If you let that clip go, when Liz says “out,” I don’t hear the Canadian raising at all in her accent. Julian, a little bit later in this clip has a pronounced Canadian raising in “Christmas, to me, is about one thing.” That “about” is pretty much the stereotypical “aboot/aboat” we Americans talk about.
He was. Then he found his older, uglier toque, and has been wearing that one since!
It doesn’t jump out at me as being a Canadian accent, no. The York prof whose lectures I’m listening to has a stronger one, and it’s what I’d consider a very weak eastern accent.
As for the Trailer Park Boys, there’s varying degrees of easternity in there too, but I don’t hear it in the example re: Christmas being about money. Sorry. Really, I don’t.
There are strong accents in Eastern North America, and they fade as one goes west. I won’t deny the existence of the Newfoundland or Tronna accents, but to my ears I sound as whitebread as any California newscaster, and so do the local locals. So I find it odd that the same people who’d agree that said newscaster speaks fluent Bland Midwest hear an accent in my voice.
No, I totally believe you don’t hear it. I wanted to check if it was something you could hear or not in audio examples. Not every Canadian has that accent. In my experience, maybe half of the Canadians I’ve met have it, and they tend to be from central or eastern Canada. Like I’ve said upthread, “aboot” is a very poor way of conveying the accent (IMO), and it’s no wonder Canadians are puzzled. It’s closer to “aboat.” If I were writing it, once again as I said upthread, it’s the difference between “uh-BAHWT” (American Midwest and Canadian non-raising accents) and “uh-BEHWT” or “uh-BUHWT.”
What’s interesting is that the Wikipedia article on the accent says that it only occurs before unvoiced sounds, so people who do have that dialect feature will pronounce the “ou” in “a house” and “to house somebody” differently, the first with Canadian raising, and the second without.
edit: OK, here’s one more. This one is the heaviest of the bunch.
This must be incomprehensible, then. These are the people who wander aboot the hoose. Lard t’underin’ Jesus, yes.
Sorry, I didn’t mean the guy above has the heaviest accent in Canada or anything–I meant he has the most pronounced “ou” sound of the bunch I cited. I purposely tried to avoid the really heavy regional accents, to show more neutral accents where the “ow” really sticks out to my American ears. I’ve actually seen the video you linked to before–it’s not too bad, but the one next it, labeled “the accent”, is a bit more difficult to follow. It’s a lovely accent–at least I think so. Love the sing-songy Northern Irishness of it.