A lot of them in Quebec are simply the easiest obvious calque from French as well. (That may or may not happen to be used in the U.S. too.)

Some Acadian relatives I have in the Maritimes refer to the power bill as a bill for "pouvoir", even though in NB at least the name of the utility is NB Power / Énergie NB.

I don't think I've ever seen a garbage disposal in person, and I have been in relatives homes of every class. I know what they are from television, those things in the drain that roar and sometimes chew people's arms off. I think most people here just use the sink's upturned stop to filter the water and then shake what the stop collects into the garbage. That's what I do anyway.

Well, you are cordially invited to Calgary to take a peek at my garburator.

Speaking of this, I have definitely received "sides" of macaroni and cheese in the U.S. that are larger than what I'd hope most people consider a meal.

Is that a euphemism?

I just moved into a house that has one... it's the first time I've ever had to deal with a garburator. I have no idea how it works... I suppose at some point I should sit down and read the manual.

That's open for interpretation.

In most places I've lived that have one, it's usually tied to one of your light switches. You just have to make sure you keep the tap running while it's turned on.

Oh crap, I finally figured out how to power it on yesterday (I had to... water wasn't draining properly anymore). I ran it for about a minute without running the tap.

Have I now ruined my garburator? :(

Now that I think of it, if was to name that thing you guys call a garburator in English, I'd probably say "trash compactor".

Is that wrong?

The water is to rinse food particles after they've been ground up. Otherwise it might eventually get clogged.

Did you think when you woke up this morning you'd be teaching people elsewhere in Canada how to use a garburator?

I doubt it's ruined. No offence intended to Esquire but these things are generally "idiot-proofed", aren't they?

No. I was thinking about why my neighbour decided it was okay to have people over at 4 am, and an hour later I was sitting at Denny's filled with homicidal thoughts.

Isn't garburator already an English word and out west (???), a garburator is a very different thing than a trash compactor. One attachs to the bottom of your sink (garburator ) while the other doesn't. Somehow though I think you're being sarcastic and I'm just missing it.

No sarcasm intended at all.

Thanks for the garburator tech support, guys! Now time for me to read that manual ;)

None taken...when it comes to garburators, I am about as clueless as a newborn babe. :)

And as for trash compactors... are those actually household appliances? I always thought of them as something for commercial use, e.g. Canadian Tire might have one to crush boxes or whatever.

Soccer-baseball? You sick freaks!

Garburator is a Canadian word for what is known in the USA as a garbage disposal. It is under the sink. A trash compactor is a small machine that compacts garbage into a bag so the garbage trucks can pick up a much smaller unit generally 4 bags down to 1

i don't thnk i've ever seen a trash compactor in a house, but grocery stores etc use them

and speaking of garburators, my mom used to be a building manager and she had these tenants who were recently moved from eastern europe, and they used to use their toilet as a garburator, they would put all their food scraps down the toilet and it was always getting plugged up.

Sitting in a Dennys at 5am is reason to be Homicidal.

That said I just replaced my GD recently. Not much to it, its almost plug and play. with a few bolts and screws attached.

It is recommended that you run some bones (Chicken) through the system every once in a while. It apparently cleans the blades.

The disposal macerates the food products which flush out with water. Running water is also recommended not just to flush the system but to cool the grinder motor.

Interesting enough, the sanitary systems in most communities of Nunavut have these maceraters on the toilets since all sanitary has to be trucked to the WWTPs in the communities.

When I was growing up (southwestern Ontario) I don't remember ever having "real" and cheese, so it was always Kraft Dinner or KD, and that's what we called it. I remember seeing "real" mac and cheese once and going "huh, someone made a fancy homemade KD".

We had homemade mac and cheese, always with diced tomatoes and usually with slices of pork sausage.

Kraft Dinner was like fast food, a rare treat or even more rarely if my parents were swamped with work.

Macaroni and cheese - the dish that bound generations of Canadians together. In more ways than one ....

Yep - it has to be neon orange to qualify. (Regardless of the brand - the "real" Kraft brand or its supermarket chains' own home-brand clones.)

Growing up, it was universally called kickball by all of us in my francophone area of Quebec.

(Anecdotal bit, in my head it was spelled Quickball - only much later as an adult with some notions of English did I realize in retrospect what "kick" meant and that it made total sense as a name.)

It's always more convenient to ignore that a part of the country is francophone. Our obvious (or not-so obvious) answers would have been different, for the most part. That would have made the maps look more canadiennes:

Liqueur || Dépanneur || Tuque || Broyeur || Crayons de couleur (or à colorier) || Kraft dinner (after 1995) or Macaroni au fromage (generic) || Divan || Cônes orange || Souper || Chalet || Running shoes (pronounce : rénille chouzes in the worst case) or just Souliers || Coton ouaté. Hoodie is becoming something, but that wasn't the case before || Kickball || Quelqu’un qui s’est levé du mauvais pied || Décalques or Papier transfert (we don’t really have a common word for decal) || ca-ra-mel (pronounce : kaʁamɛl) || Papier de construction or Papier bristol (not the same thing) || Notes || Ustensiles or Couverts || T'as-rond-Teau (pronounce : tɔ.ʁɔ̃.to) || Gouttières || Le compte d’hydro or just L’électricité || Élastique.

Ontario is exactly the same, at least in my experience. Growing up in Alberta it took me a while to figure out hydro, although since I spent a lot of time with family in Ontario during summers I was quite familiar by the time I moved here.

I admit that kickball / soccer-baseball made me scratch my head.

I mean, I knew exactly what it was but I wondered (as I always do when I heard a term like that in English) how I'd say that in French.

Then it dawned upon me that I'd only played soccer-baseball (that's what they called it) in the English schools I went to.

In my years of schooling in French we never happened to play that sport.

I'll have to ask my kids tonight if they've ever played it and what they call it.

I bet that if they know it it's called kickball.

We used to play it every spring and fall, outside, at elementary school (en éducation physique). We always called it kickball.

I'd say "espadrille" for sneakers/running shoes is very common in Quebec too. That's what my kids and all of their friends call them. And when we get notes from school about what's needed for gym class, it's always the word "espadrille" that is used. Signage in shops also reflects this.

As you probably know, in France an "espadrille" isn't that at all. It generally refers to a type of light canvas footwear. Like you might wear on a summer day.

In France, sneakers/running shoes/espadrilles are known as "baskets". :D

The slow and subtle internationalization of the French spoken in Quebec has led "baskets" to gain some traction here, but it's still not what most people say. Even if most everyone is familiar with the term.

I know espadrile because of Shea Coulee. :D

• Video Link

So I see we were having none of this toque business.

I was telling Ayreonaut it's so foreign to me I don't even read it right. I always initially say "toke" in my head. And then remember what it really is.

I don't like that spelling either... I use touque, which although not standard, looks much better to me.

As in English - a canvas upper with a braided rope sole.

edit.

Yes, I've never ever even suspected there could be people out there who'd have another name for it. Most sports by far only have one: baseball, hockey, basketball, tennis...

Quebec would be deep red in the kickball map, had they done their study correctly. (I don't doubt that Montreal Anglos call that sport whatever Ontarians call it.)

Interesting graphic. Ontario has high hydro (or electricity...) costs in a Canadian context but doesn't necessarily seem to be the case worldwide. Although there are a lot of extra factors in the bill other than the rate. I have heard it's a lot more expensive in New York state though.

Australia was a shocking one to me - I knew it was mostly coal but didn't know emissions were that high. Sparse population density probably helps with pollution. Cooling towers from coal plants seemed to be a ubiquitous sight in South Africa - they were all over Gauteng province. They're on a big building kick now after realizing that there was not enough power capacity taking into account both population growth and the electrification of rural areas, townships and informal settlements that were ignored under apartheid. Even wealthy areas had scheduled rolling blackouts (called load shedding) for years.

In some ways it does make sense to exclude Francophones from this type of analysis though. Yes, Francophones make up a significant proportion of Canada, but since French is a completely different language, you won't get the same "value" in the type of survey that was done. It's not an effort to snub, but rather a conscious choice to look at how the English used in different places varies. It can of course be flavoured by other languages, but that's part of the regional "English" comparison; what different dynamics in each region have affected the English that's used? Dépanneur is a great example of that; it's so prevalent that it's used in English discourse.

One would pretty much want to do a completely separate survey that involves Francophones from different parts of the country to get at a similar concept (which I think would be interesting too).

When I was in school, we played "soccer hockey". It was basically hockey, but in the grass and with a ball instead of a puck. You would shoot the ball with a stick just like in hockey, into a literal hockey net. It was much easier than hockey for some fairly obvious reasons.

Kickball was our name for Soccer, and Soccer was a mysterious thing that kids in wealthier homes did at the park which we didn't really understand, but they sold us chocolate bars to help pay for it.

I use soda instead of pop online because there is less need to explain what you mean. I found that when I say pop online, people question it.

I call traffic cones "pine cones" because I confuse the terms "pylon" and "traffic cone". And speaking of pylons, the large lattice structures that hold of high voltage lines are "hydro towers".

My kids and their friends confirm it's kickball for them.

That's called "boots hockey" here.

(Alternatively, we also say "hockey cosom" and/or "hockey balle".)

The dynamics are actually closer to soccer than ice hockey, IMO. I've played all three for years. Sure, you use a stick rather than your feet, but the fact there's no momentum management make the game functionally much more like soccer. You can stop, turn, accelerate, position yourself, etc. exactly like in soccer.

All things considered, I prefer both soccer and this "soccer hockey" to ice hockey, I'd say. I suppose I'll have to turn in my Canadian card :P

Absolutely, but then I'd have presented the graphics differently, leaving most of Quebec blank or blacked out, with a round patch of color in southern Quebec intended to represent our Anglos.

Had they done it that way they'd always have been correct, rather than occasionally totally wrong as they've been - for example, on the kickball one.

Never heard of boots hockey. I guess it is someone's translation of hockey bottines.

Also never ever heard of soccer hockey. When I read it I thought of a big soccer ball.

But with a tennis ball (or that size) I think it is called ball hockey in English.

I've never heard the words "boots hockey", it was my own translation of hockey bottines for vid's benefit.

Also, I'm nearly certain no one plays it with anything other than those orange balls (tennisball-sized) designed for that sport. I really doubt people would play it with hockey sticks and a soccer ball! Doable, but not very nice - you'd have to always have your stick's flat curved surface (how do you say "palette" in English?) a couple inches above the ground, and I don't think you could slapshot well. In fact if I were forced to play that sport I'd carry the hockey stick if I had to but I'd use my feet :P

^ Yup, hockey without a pick, but a ball instead (pretty much always the bright orange ball meant for the sport as was mentioned above), was ball hockey, though if done on the street - having to move the nets when cars were coming - would be street hockey rather than ball hockey... And sometimes called shinny if you're being a little more "official", which is kind of funny since this is all about regional colloquialisms.

There are likely enough English speakers outside of the specific concentration zones to fill out the map of the province though... By the same definition as you have, you'd probably want to black out much of Northern Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec, as well as the Northwest Territories, and Nunavut for both English and French comparisons as the sparse populations would more likely use native languages like Cree, Ojibway, Dene, or Inuktitut... :shrug:

So, this was yet another case where the Anglo-Canada moniker would have been useful! But people are wont to use it and prefer to use Canadians a whole instead!

So when you think about it an unknowing foreigner who sees that might think that in Quebec most people would say "j'ai besoin de coloured pencils pour l'école"! :yes: