I never really thought about this until my wife (from southern ON, but who's been in NS/NB for about 10 years) mentioned that her family have started noticing her "maritime" accent. I asked her what they said she sounded like and she said, "kinda like a pirate". In Ontario, for example, the R on the end of "car" is softer. In the maritimes, it's more... "piratey" for lack of a better word. Drawn out. Also, in ON, you apparently park in a "gah-rawge" but in NB it's a "gradge". :D She also makes fun of the way I refer to my father; she says I sound like I'm saying "dee-add" instead of "dahd". We also like to clip out bits of words here. The last day of the week is "Sa-er-day" (mashed together) not "Sa-ter-day". Also used by myself and others I know:

"This pie is some good."
"Are ya spoze'da?" (Are you supposed to)
"Did you guys play hookey?" (skipped school)
"She was three sheets to the wind!" (drunk)
"Really reef on it, will ya?" (pull hard)
"Are car zin the gradge." (Our car is in the garage)
"Did you make the cake badder?" (cake batter)

It's also because there is no single dominant variant of English there like there would be in a mainly anglophone city.

The dominant code you hear in public is French, not English, and so this prevents a standardized English from taking hold.

And when English is used, it's often in a variety of accents, including French, and often ''second language'' English as opposed to native speaker.

maritimers often sort of flatten their short vowels, so "car" becomes "ker," and "milk," "melk."

i don't know. until the 1960s or '70s — even the '80s in some cases — a lot of anglo montrealers lived in english and treated the city as if it were anglophone. the accents of these pre-quiet revolution old-timers are related to the modern ones; check out old interviews with mordecai richler etc.

This is true, but I am talking more about contemporaries. And even Richler's generation was heavily exposed to a predominance of ''second languagers''.

It seems like every American city or state has their own accent while Canada is regarded as having just one.

To be honest, the most distinct to me seem to be Newfoundland, Quebec and then rest of Canada. I've never been able to notice any others.

I've also never heard anyone talk in that Canadain stereotype created by Americans (eg. aboot)

canadians always protest that they don't get the "aboot" thing*, but it's actually pretty apparent when you come to canada after spending some time away. there is a noticeable deviation from standard u.s. english on words like that, and it's vaguely scottish-sounding.

(* this is 10% because it's inexact and 90% because it sort of embarrasses people. it's also a class marker: working class and blue collar canadians sound more like this than do other ones.)

I live in Mississauga and I've never heard it. I remember when that "I Am Canadian" commerial came out I had to ask people what he was talking about saying "ABOOT". I spent a month in Londond UK and when I came back I still didn't notice. Is it not a GTA thing??

It's not really aboot. It's described like that with exaggeration by Americans who are unfamiliar with it and used to hearing it said abahhht.

it's all over the GTA, but it's maybe more subtle there. i can tell a torontonian from an american here using that exact metric. again, "aboot" isn't quite right, but there's a definite quality to that vowel sound that americans don't have. the american "about" is flatter and broader in nearly every regional case.

Anglos in Montréal have a sound similar to how we speak french here in Qc. When you are bilingual, it becomes even more clear. Anglos here in Montréal can say '' there is a small wind'' '' ya un ptit vent '' ... they say ''I had 7 on 10 '' j'ai eu 7 sur 10 '' they use french syntax and they translate word for word. country house instead of cottage.. cottage means a 2-storey home. close the light , open the lights. etc.... all-dressed pizza everybody ?

I'm gonna try to listening to a Canadian news show and then CNN and see if I can spot it.

again and again ... agayn agen

I do the "melk" thing, if I heard it pronounced like "ilk" I would ask that person when they became the Queen.

Have never heard "ker" though.

I haven't heard it used in person, but there was a commercial for maybe workplace safety or something like it with a woman from Ontario or Saskatchewan (I know the woman was a nurse in the commercial) and she spoke with the "aboot" thing. It used to come on during hockey games I think.

All the variants people are speaking about seem to reflect lower class/less educated speech patterns. The Ottawa Valley thing definitely exists, as does the Rideau Valley accent, which can actually be mistaken for a Newfoundland accent (heavy Irish influence).

Personally, I think I sound like Peter Mansbridge ( :D ) although when I lived in D.C. I was sometimes asked if I was from Wisconsin or Minnesota.

Big disparity between Swampy Cree, Oji-Cree, and Metis accents in Manitoba. Also a strong rural vs urban divide in white communities, as well as being split along ethic background (e.g. 3rd generation Mennonite, Ukranian, and French will all sound much, much different). Classic Canadian-guy accent represents a small portion.

I used to find the pronunciation of the old Montreal anglo community (ie British ancestry) to be slightly more "clipped" (precise? I can't find a good word to describe it) sounding than that of points west. I always felt that west of Montreal there was very little variation in standard Canadian English. Things have changed over the last thirty or forty years however.

Today, as has been pointed out, you can sometimes hear the slightest hint of a French Quebec accent in the speech of some anglo Montrealers. That's apart from the use of French words and phrasings.

More like "abahwt", but yeah. Some as the distinctive U.S. and Canadian pronunciations of "house" (i.e. hahwse in the States vs Canada's "howse").

I'm really impressed by how fine-tuned your ears are... able to tell between different areas of Ontario? To my ears (and I've traveled all over the continent) there are basically two different Anglo accents that I can really distinguish in North America, U.S. deep south (found from east TX to the Carolinas, mostly outside cities), and North-American-non-U.S.-Southern. (Includes all Canadians... oh, actually not Newfoundlanders any more, now that I've heard videos, thanks SHH ;))


Having said that, I can immediately and effortlessly tell a Saguenay accent, even more easily a Gaspésie accent, and it's easy to tell from which area of France someone comes based on the accent (and if Belgian or Swiss instead), so I suppose that your amazing skills (to me) are just normal. I can actually even recognize a Sorel-specific accent, but the kids nowadays have of course zero accent, only people 50/60 or older, more or less. I think people my age and younger from southern Quebec don't really have regional accents any more.



I wonder how long it takes to develop that ability to recognize and identify ridiculously small differences in accent if you're not a native speaker... it's likely the very last thing you develop... or maybe never?

In my experience, is far more difficult to hear accents in a foreign language unless they are very pronounced. I am fluent in Spanish for example, but can't really pick out the differences among Central American accents, although all my CentAm acquaintances can immediately tell which country someone is from. As for Canadian French, I could probably tell if someone was a Quebecker or Acadian, but that's about it. It also depends on the amount of exposure - I have on occasion mistaken New Zealanders for Australians, much to their displeasure!