Speech pattern and typographical variations across Canada

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Loco101

Yes, you are right about Boulet. Excellent example of an exception.

How would you pronounce the family name Chabot ? (there are two different ways I heard in our region)

I hear both from people with that name: with or without the T pronounced.

But overwhelmingly it seems to be "shah-butt" that dominates in French Canada. The other one, "shah-bo", is considered a bit posh by some people.

In areas outside Quebec like Ottawa, Sudbury, Cornwall, Timmins, it's often pronounced "shah-bott" by anglophones.

Another name that has different pronunciations is Tardif. Sometimes the F is silent, sometimes it isn't. Depends on the region I think.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

How are Ma-Kaye and Ma-Kay different? I'd say both of those the same way.

Here it depends on the family. Most are Mack-Kay. One is Mackie. None that I know are Mack-Hi, or whatever the proper pronunciation is.

One rhymes with eye and one rhymes with hay.

[Nashe]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Which is to say?

Mih-kai/Mih-kye.

Optionally: Throw some spit in the middle.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker;7428949[B

]How are Ma-Kaye and Ma-Kay different? I'd say both of those the same way.
[/B]
Here it depends on the family. Most are Mack-Kay. One is Mackie. None that I know are Mack-Hi, or whatever the proper pronunciation is.

Ma-Kaye rhymes with Isle of Skye. Ma-Kay rhymes with "you don't say".

As we've seen with a number of names, either pronunciation is correct in Canada, although they are not interchangeable.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I hear both from people with that name: with or without the T pronounced.

But overwhelmingly it seems to be "shah-butt" that dominates in French Canada. The other one, "shah-bo", is considered a bit posh by some people.

In areas outside Quebec like Ottawa, Sudbury, Cornwall, Timmins, it's often pronounced "shah-bott" by anglophones.

Another name that has different pronunciations is Tardif. Sometimes the F is silent, sometimes it isn't. Depends on the region I think.

To me it's "shah-bo" in Ottawa. And yes, posh as the Sandy Hill family that bore the name.

[rousseau]

Not Canadian, so off-topic, but in the spirit of a wide-ranging discussion on accents, I give you the film Kes from 1969 which features a 1960s Yorkshire dialect that can be difficult to understand to people not from Yorkshire (which is why it did poorly in the box office in North America in spite of great reviews).

I only just saw it recently, stumbling upon it on Youtube, but I've known of it for ages, and had always meant to find it somehow. There's so much great stuff on Youtube's, it's incredible.

Kes is about an aimless fifteen-year-old boy who takes up falconry, which may not sound all that exciting, but it has been called one of the greatest portrayals of adolescence on film (along with The 400 Blows), and it also functions as a fascinating time capsule of life in the north of England in the late 1960s (i.e. no hippies here).

Also, for those with the niche interest, watching Kes you will provide you with an understanding of the inspiration for just about every song ever written by Morrissey. The whole movie is essentially a string of "a-ha" moments if you're a Smiths/Morrissey fan.

• Video Link

Accent tips:

- "The" gets shortened to a hard "t" with no vowel in Yorkshire, but it's elided so that often you can't even hear it. At 2:10 he says "Nah, cause I'm not gonna work down t' pit."
- You sometimes hear "Tha" and "Thee" for the subject and object of "you." They were informal, only used with family and friends.
- "Nowt" is nothing, and "owt" is anything.

The famous caning scene (1:00:13) is heartbreaking. A group of boys about to be caned by the headmaster (principal) for smoking force a younger boy to pocket their cigarettes for them, and the boy ends up getting caned. The growing realization that he is about to be punished for something he didn't do and that he is powerless in the face of the bullying schoolmates and the iron fist of authority is portrayed to very moving effect.

Okay, off-topic contribution over (I just thought that various people on this board might be interested).

[SignalHillHiker]

I like that accent. It's endearing, somehow.

*****

Watching The Once all day. Geraldine (the lead singer) is from a small village on the Burin Peninsula - which means her ancestry was English, not Irish. Rural, English accents here can be very strong (full glottal stops and the works), or quite subtle. Geraldine's is the latter, and clearly tinged with more than a few years in St. John's. But very, very NOT among the Avalon Peninsula's, Irish-influenced accents.

Included the other two b'ys as well.

I think, combined, they kind of represent where our accent is going... weaker overall, stronger in rural areas, but a little character in all the right places. One of these guys says "cool" with the (sounds to me like) two syllables that's common away. That's too far. Reign it in.

I cut out all the performances so the weird breaks are where a live song was. Video is 3-4 years old so all the time-related references are off.

• Video Link

I love that Phil loves Al Pittman. He's the poet who described us as an island in the sky. Perfect, given the rain, drizzle, and fog. And isolation. And cultural self-sufficiency.

[kwoldtimer]

I don't think Newfoundland would immediately occur to me if I heard either of them out on the street. The Churchill chap, in particular - I barely hear "Atlantic", let alone "Newfoundland".

[SignalHillHiker]

Wow, well that's... I'm not sure if it's good or bad. But he definitely checks all the boxes I need to love a local accent. Long vowels, O turns into A a lot, etc. It'd be interesting if our accents gets to a point where it sounds good to both of us. One insisting it's there, the other insisting it's gone. To me, Andrew has the weakest accent. By a considerable margin.

[Marty_Mcfly]

Is handtalking a part of the local dialect where Geraldine is from?

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Marty_Mcfly

Is handtalking a part of the local dialect where Geraldine is from?

That's the crowd off the ferry from St-Pierre, b'y. Give her a break. She's not far from you, BTW. I think she's from Garnish, or Frenchman's Cove. Maybe Grand Beach. Somewhere on the west side. Dad is a friendly acquaintance of her parents and all her aunts/uncles. Every time I go see them, he always asks if I told her who my father is. "Dad, just ****ing come with me!", "No..." *scrunches up face* "I can't go The Once, never could. Too shrill."

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by kwoldtimer

I don't think Newfoundland would immediately occur to me if I heard either of them out on the street. The Churchill chap, in particular - I barely hear "Atlantic", let alone "Newfoundland".

Yes, those two (especially the guy) are the perfect example of what I've described in the past about the Newfoundland accent being less and less pronounced.

There are people about an hour and a half from here in the Upper Ottawa Valley whose accent diverges way more from the standard Canadian accent, than those people in that video.

[SignalHillHiker]

I agree (I think even I diverge more from generic than they do, BUT... such a big BUT)... and I think they're a good example of where we're going. But it's still perfectly relateable to me. Everything about mainlander accents that annoys me or makes me shudder, they don't have. They say "went" right. They say "song" right. They say "home" right. When they aren't thinking and speak a full sentence, they have the right flow, the right humor. They don't go up at the end of every thought. There's just... none of things that, in my daily life, strike someone out as a mainlander to me... they don't have it. Except once when Phil says "cool" it's very mainland.

I'm kind of shocked you find it so close. To me, it's not at all. And that makes me paranoid. Like English speakers can't hear the differences between all the various Ukrainian ch sounds, are you just not hearing it?

[SignalHillHiker]

One more snippet of Geraldine at the end. Kept the song in this time because I'm having some unemployment beers and wanted to hear it.

It freaks me out sometimes how similar we all can be (not NL specific, I just mean humans in general). Her outlook on faith is basically identical to my mother. Mom could've been the one interviewed and she'd have said exactly this.

• Video Link

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I agree (I think even I diverge more from generic than they do, BUT... such a big BUT

I've heard your accent (when you posted a recording), and you diverge from the mainlanders quite a bit more than they do.

There's no mistaking that you're not from Brampton. Or Winnipeg.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I agree (I think even I diverge more from generic than they do, BUT... such a big BUT)... and I think they're a good example of where we're going. But it's still perfectly relateable to me. Everything about mainlander accents that annoys me or makes me shudder, they don't have. They say "went" right. They say "song" right. They say "home" right. When they aren't thinking and speak a full sentence, they have the right flow, the right humor. They don't go up at the end of every thought. There's just... none of things that, in my daily life, strike someone out as a mainlander to me... they don't have it. Except once when Phil says "cool" it's very mainland.

I'm kind of shocked you find it so close. To me, it's not at all. And that makes me paranoid. Like English speakers can't hear the differences between all the various Ukrainian ch sounds, are you just not hearing it?

There is a difference but it's very subtle. It could be that my ear isn't as trained as yours.

Kind of like how most of the French think Québécois and Acadiens sound essentially the same, whereas to me (to all of us on the side of the ocean, in fact) the difference is extremely obvious.

[Acajack]

To put things in perspective...

I've met tons of Newfoundlanders over the years whose accent (to non-experts) might allow them to quickly pass for someone from Ireland.

That's definitely not the case for the people in those videos. If they were to go to the British Isles and speak like that, they'd be labelled as (North) Americans by most everyone except maybe someone with a PhD in global anglophone accents.

Unless they altered their accent while there - which some people admittedly do.

[SignalHillHiker]

No, I don't think they're altered at all. We definitely have a "talking to mainlanders" thing, but to whatever extent that exists, it's definitely not in this video. The only caveats that could possible be in this one is that they're enunciating clearly almost like reading because they're on camera. But their pronunciation is still natural, I assure you. A T at the beginning of a word might be even more of a D once the camera shut off, but basically everything they say is naturally how they'd say it.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by Acajack

I've heard your accent (when you posted a recording), and you diverge from the mainlanders quite a bit more than they do.

There's no mistaking that you're not from Brampton. Or Winnipeg.

Especially after the third beer, I suspect. Re Brampton, I find that young ethnic GTA is sounding less and less Canadian. It's not a new thing by any means, but to me the divergence is becoming more pronounced, so to speak.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

No, I don't think they're altered at all. We definitely have a "talking to mainlanders" thing, but to whatever extent that exists, it's definitely not in this video. The only caveats that could possible be in this one is that they're enunciating clearly almost like reading because they're on camera. But their pronunciation is still natural, I assure you. A T at the beginning of a word might be even more of a D once the camera shut off, but basically everything they say is naturally how they'd say it.

Oh, I wasn't talking about that video. I was talking about when Newfoundlanders travel to Ireland (or maybe the UK), if they maybe alter their accents - consciously or subconsciously.

It's kind of an issue here when our celebrities go to France and very audibly change their accents when they appear in the media over there.

Even worse when they come back home from France and keep on talking with a French accent here in Quebec!

Though, in fairness, a bit of accent drift is normal when you spend time abroad and there isn't necessarily anything pretentious about it.

When I was in my 20s I spent an extended period of time in Europe (including in France) and when I came back home my friends mocked my speech and told me I was talking like a pompous Parisian. In my mind I was speaking the exact same way as when I left home.