Hurlabrick

Nah - now the 'beerhunter' skit - that is truly hilarious!

My Uncle definitely used to use 'eh' a lot (so perhaps generational?). I have often heard 'aboot' but pronounced more subtly - more like abouwt - quite distinctive when you do hear it, but not now widespread.

It's a bit like the 'definitive' test for whether someone is a New Zealander or and Aussie - say 'sex' - NZ pronouces as 'sucks'!

caretaker

Ya gotta put 'em in when they're real small, and feed them.

scrubbedexpat091

I was too young so don't remember this SCTV, but watching a few on youtube, quite funny.

Paul_Shepherd

My brother in law (in the UK) asked me "so you can go swimming in the lakes in Canada?" I say yes, "we do it all the time" he says, "with a wet suit"? .. Me: "err... no just in your swimming trunks..." his reply oh I didnt know it was that warm and clean".... and my brother in law certainly isn't stupid!

People in who live and one country don't know much about others, thats why that saying "travel broadens the mind" (it is so true)

Lychee

Just wait until you hear about the Brit who flew to Toronto to see the bears and mountains of Canada.

caretaker

I knew someone who got kicked out of the RCMP for riding his horse through a nurses residence in Ottawa. That's fairly Canadian.

Teaandtoday5

😀😀best we ever got was 3 engines worth of firemen to rescue us from burnt toast

scilly

It has always been a Brit who has asked the following questions, and getting my replies ......

Them: Where do you live?

Me: In Canada

Them: Oh, my aunt/cousin/sister lives in Toronto. Do you know her? She works in a shoe shop.

Me: Unlikely. Canada's a very big country, and we don't live in Toronto

Them: I thought everyone would know everyone else there.


DOH!

Mind you, it was Texans who asked did we live in igloos and have dog sleds.

Jingsamichty

When I was a teenager I worked in a hotel in Perthshire and we used to get a lot of coach holiday tours stopping for lunch. Mostly it was retired people from the UK but we also had Canadian and American tour parties. Even at that time we were able to distinguish the Canadians from the Americans, not by their accents, but by their clothes. My goodness, Canadian retirees in the 1980s had a unique dress sense... polyester central, tartan trousers, shiny jackets, badges, baseball caps... it was like a uniform.

Mind you, it was an American southern chap who proudly told me, "Mah ancestors came from Loch Ness!"

abner

I've had an American compliment me on 'how well [I] speak the language'. Not sure whether he assumed I was Canadian or British (my accent is more the former, given my early upbringing), but it was hilarious either way.

no good name

Yeah fair point. The title did come across worse (written), than what was intended.

But, "do they have pizza and lakes in scotland?" C'mon

dbd33

I work closely with a suburban Canadian, Oakville Woman, Scottish parents, high school in Oakville, then commuted to the university in Toronto. Sometimes I wonder if she's a person or a caricature of suburbia. Last week we chatted (by Skype or Teams or Sametime) about Rogers and the way they cheat on their billing

"it's their corporate ethos, innit?" I typed.

"You're such a wordsmith" she responded

"Eh?"

"Ethos, how do you know the word 'ethos'"?

The conversation moved on to Trump and I said I hoped there's a lamppost in his future and then I explained that was a reference to Mussolini and, when prompted, that he was a dictator in Italy. My colleague asked how I knew that and I guessed I originally learned it in school and she asked if, in the UK, "students" were taught about things that happened outside the UK.

At this point I was tired of conversing with the token cradle but later I was reminded of my children complaining that, since there's no history in Canada they had to study the Plains of ****ing Abraham every year and me asking them how come they didn't always get 100% if the material was always the same.

Oakville Woman is nice enough and she doesn't need to know about anything that doesn't happen in Oakville but it's a bit limiting that, if you want to talk to someone here who has a broad knowledge of the world, Mennonites are the best bet. Informed, but smelly.

Granted, I don't suppose the cast of TOWIE could manage the names of three famous dictators between them but there does seem to be a lack of focus on anything besides the US, and Canada, in Canadian education.

caretaker

What I find most disturbing is that she attended, and presumably graduated from university. I think in my old high-school class of '72 we received a well rounded education in world history and affairs, but acknowledge that it may have been going to the dogs already. In the late 60's and early '70's my mother worked for the provincial government, and while she was secretary to the minister of education she received letters from teachers all over the province. She mentioned one evening that she was tempted to correct the spelling and grammar and send them back with a mark on the top. For what it's worth, I've met some incredibly stupid people from the UK, but they are definitely in the minority.

dbd33

UofT isn't so bad, at least not the main campus, it's in central Toronto so one would be exposed to a range of people and news outside the school if not within it. People who went to Waterloo really seem to have had their brains vacuumed.

Jingsamichty

Quite understandable, the really stupid ones don't tend to go anywhere, so you have only met Brits with the gumption to travel. Be under no illusion that the UK doesn't have it's fair share of morons.

Similarly, most Brits in the UK have a very positive view of Canadians. But, likewise, that's because they haven't met so many of them