The canadian accent????
 

HEE HEE! JUST A SILLY ONE REALLY BUT SOMETHING I'VE BEEN THINKING OF....IF ANYONE WHOS MOVED OVER TO CANADA WITH CHILDREN HOW LONG WAS IT BEFORE THEY PICKED UP THE ACCENT???? WE'VE JUST HAD FRIENDS RETURN FROM AUSTRALIA THEIR KIDS HAVE GOT THE CUTEST/FUNNIEST ACCENTS LIVERPOOL/OZ COMBO!!!!

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Great effort and expense has ensured that my children have not acquired the local accent.

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Snob....:p :D

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One must strive to maintain some standards. I've also sought to discourage the wearing of plaid and the consumption of poutine.

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We have been here two years now and it wasn't until I watched an old video of my eldest (taken a month before we flew out here) I hadn't actually realised quite HOW Canadian she sounds now! She sounds like a Mary Poppins extra on the video...lol

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What accent do they have, then?

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Parisian.

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Nice, very nice.

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You mean that town near Brantford?

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Is working with a guy from there now eh. He's after sounding like the town was populated by Newfies who then inbred.

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Quite right too.

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My then 13 year old took about 10 months for his accent to change. It would have changed sooner if there had not been a 10-week break off school in the summer. His accent has no trace of Scottishness whatsover.

Our then 16 year old hung onto his accent much longer and I would say it is only in the last 14 months that it has changed a lot. This is mainly because he works p/t in a video store and deals face to face with customers each shift. He does not sound as Canadian as his brother though.

Me, I sound more and more like Mrs Doubtfire :rofl:

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In 10 months, I still haven't found out how to say the letter E and be understood - which is a pain because my postcode has an E in it, they always think I'm saying A. They even put it on my drivers license which I had to get changed - arrrrgh!

Also, can't bring myself to say wader instead of water - tried 4 times to order a water the other day before the woman next to me in the queue stepped in as an interpreter and ordered a wader for me....

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Although some will dispute that there is no difference between a standard US and Canadian accent, once you get to places like Windsor or Niagara Falls, ont, there are some hints of american accent in the general accent. I'm sure as well that in places like Windsor, words like 'sneaker' and general acceptance of US spellings like center, neighbor etc are pretty high. Windsor uses the US system of street numbering so people can say they live on the '800' block etc of a street and people know exactly where that is.

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I'd say it's more the other way around - the Canadian accent sneaks into the US, you'll hear people using "eh?" in Michigan, and "ooot" and "aboot". All of the spellings I've seen here have been the Canadian way - Centre, Colour etc, though I'm sure no one would care here if you spelt them the US way either.

I'm intrigued about the street numbering - I hadn't considered that it is different elsewhere in Canada. Are houses numbered like the UK elsewhere then i.e. one or two digits and odd numbering one side of the street, even the other side?

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Hmmm I think I may have to conduct some sort of experiment once I have children...subject one too all things english sounding and another to all canadian.

Whoever earns the most after 25 years becomes my favourite :rofl:

;)

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What I was referring to in Windsor is that where a street starts it starts at #1 on one side and #2 on the other...once that street meets a cross street it goes to #100 and #101 and then at the next street it goes #200 and #201. I have not noticed that anywhere else in Canada.

As well, I've noticed that in Windsor people are still more tuned into fahrenheit than celsius than other parts of Canada especially if they get a lot of their media from Detroit.

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I do dispute the existence of a Canadian accent distinct from a US accent. Street numbering and footwear terminology are not national but regional, there's no 800 block in Compton.

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Most places I've lived are like this.

Especially where streets are numbered. The 5700 block of Elbow drive for example would be the houses between 56th Ave and 57th Ave.

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I use mainly fahrenheit in the GTA, I find it's convenient because that's what's shown on the neon signs on banks (e.g. TD Danforth and Coxwell) and factories (just west of the bottom on of 427). I note that my ex, a Swiss national, has taken up the use of farenheit to fit in with the kids, born here but well travelled. I can translate quickly, of course, the VW has a display in centigrade and I need to convert before knowing whether to sweat or shiver.

The point about the media coming from Detroit I don't think applies in the era of cable and satellite, we get TV from Manitoba and Washington State and radio from Shepherd's Bush.

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Hadn't noticed that about the streets - will take note....

Music to DBD's ears....

I think that's partially true, though majority of people here would understand Celcius too - wheres you mention that to a yank and they'll look at you :blink:

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The house numbers are odd on one side, usually the left as the numbers increase, even on the other. Under the new Emergency Code, the 911 thing, the numbers do not necessarily go 2,4,6,8 and so on. The number increases by one for every 10 meters of distance. Ergo if the distance between two houses was 40 meters the first one would be 1 (or 2) then the next number would be 5 (or 10). This is so that emergency services, ambulance, fire, police can locate the property from an address given in a phone call with a GPS and get there more quickly.

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I wasn't aware of that in western parts of Canada....in Ontario, I've only really noticed it in Windsor.

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That's about 33' innit? Tricky in cities where the houses are typically on 20' or 22' lots. I suppose they'll have to have irrational house numbers, "we live at root 57 Acacia Ave".

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I don't know about that but all the blue and white numbers that you see, especially in rural areas, are all based on the 10 meter scheme.

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This seems extremely unlikely since Canada only began official use of the metric system in the 1970s.

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I very much doubt that, where we are lots were originally 400 acres and roads run at those boundaries, whatever the fire number scheme is, it's not metric. Can easily find out what it is, hang on...

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Yes, I know it's only a brief time since metric was officially adopted but with real Cannuk efficiency we are "gettin''er done". Check out the 10m thing for yourself and disprove me LOL.

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Definitely true in my bit of Nova Scotia. We are number 78. Next door is 90 something. We are on 1-2 acre lots.

Friend of ours live right out in the sticks in NB. You can guesstimate how far out of the village they are, by converting their house number to a distance.

Perhaps it used to be based on yards, back in the day :rofl:

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Try using phonetics when you give someone your postal code.

Say E as in echo.;)

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I use to hate giving my postal code over the phone when ordering stuff from the states. It had a Z in it. It seems a lot of people down there have never heard Zed and it just makes me cringe to say Zee.

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Zed as in Zulu. ;)

Ours has an S and some people hear it as F so I most times will say S as in sierra.:)

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If it were based on yards it would be 16 yards...seems an odd figure to me.

I would guess that it may have been every 30 feet??? but that would leave a 3ft difference when converting to metric!

This is the whole reason that conversion of distance is a real pain in the rear, my personal view is metric is a far greater system but why anybody would want to change a whole countries philosophy is lost on me.

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A learned man in phonetics!!! Not many left nowadays I guess it was the ATC, right?

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I usually say 'p' as in pneumonia and 'k' as in knife.

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Yup.:)

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:p:rofl:

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I shall of course be raising Kate to speak the perfect received pronounciation english that her father does. ;)

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I'm still hanging on !!

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I still think my daughters sound pretty English but recent visitors soon put me right. A friend of Daughter Number One (originally from Lincolnshire I think) has been here a year more than us - so three years - and she is 11 years old and to me, sounds pretty Canadian now - the odd flat vowel comes out here and there.

In a way, I think it will be a shame when my girl's accents go completely, but I guess it will happen. Certainly, their style of talking, like, and intonation, like, has changed hugely, like, with the questioning tone at the end of many a sentence? And of course the vocabulary.

Hubby says my R's have changed - that's an R folks, not my arse. But I figure my R's were always a little more rolled and pronounced than your average Surrey girl anyway 'cos my parents were from Norn Iron.

I do speak slower to give people time to tune into me but I am easily understood. Well, in a speaking sense anyway ;)