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!!!!

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

Snob....

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

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

What accent do they have, then?

Parisian.

Nice, very nice.

You mean that town near Brantford?

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

Quite right too.

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

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....

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.

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?