Speech pattern and typographical variations across Canada

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by ue

As sad a day it may be, I can definitely foresee a time in the future where Quebec is no longer part of Canada. It makes sense. The place feels different from English Canada.

My comments about it seeming 'unfair' are more to do with the stupid luck English-speakers have been given. There is a double standard in place and it skews heavily in favour of Anglophones worldwide.

Definitely. English speakers are so entitled. I just hate when people come back from their vacation in Indonesia and complain "not a single asshole there spoke a word of English!" Well of course they don't. It's not their language. There's no rule that everybody in the world has to speak English.

[ue]

Originally Posted by GlassCity

Definitely. English speakers are so entitled. I just hate when people come back from their vacation in Indonesia and complain "not a single asshole there spoke a word of English!" Well of course they don't. It's not their language. There's no rule that everybody in the world has to speak English.

People actually act like that after coming back from Indonesia? What did they expect, it's Indonesia! It's not Singapore or Hong Kong.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by ue

People actually act like that after coming back from Indonesia? What did they expect, it's Indonesia! It's not Singapore or Hong Kong.

Just heard it last week. I feel like 95% of my posts are anecdotes but it's just incredible how often I hear people complaining about this.

[SignalHillHiker]

Originally Posted by Acajack

Do we actually know if she speaks French and is not simply reading a phoneticized text? I have done speeches like these for people before.

Yeah, she does. She's definitely reading that video, though. But she is in the English version too.

[SignalHillHiker]

CBC has a series where they get people to read things they wrote when they were children.

Here's a hilarious episode recorded at the Rocket in downtown St. John's, one of Canada's best cafes.

http://www.grownupsreadthingstheywroteas...m_term=0_1fde13c65d-13b32c9fba-422502393

[kool maudit]

i am slightly envious of the non-english speaking immigrants in my danish class.

if you come here from morocco or indonesia, you have to learn danish. nobody is going to address you in your native language, it's either danish or silence.

if you are english, everybody speaks flawless, unaccented english and enjoys practicing. if you fuck up a tiny bit in danish, they'll just be helpful and switch to your language.

it makes it a bit harder to learn danish (but a million times easier to just live).

the english perspective on world languages is greatly skewed due to dominance. i can go to tirana, istanbul, amman or naples, stride into a store and say "do you speak english?" as if it's not a totally weird thing. you can't do that in dutch or tagalog or chinese.

[SignalHillHiker]

I assume Danish is relatively easy for an English-speaker to learn, like German?

The one thing that I envy about other languages is the same sort of thing I envy about mainland cities - the lack of isolation and having relationships with neighbours.

It must be so cool to be able to leave some village in rural Croatia, and travel to Warsaw, or Sofia, or Moscow and be able to understand enough to get by without ever having heard the local language before in your life.

[kool maudit]

danish isn't that complicated but it is very hard to learn because of the pronunciation: words never sound like they are spelled. "hyggelig" is pronounced (something like) "hoogulee"; "amager" is "amar".

[Aylmer]

Danish is a pronunciation basket case (much like Québécois, actually) where the written and spoken language seem to be totally disconnected. I lived in Sweden for a while and picked up some fluency and, though I could perfectly read Danish newspapers, I could NOT UNDERSTAND A WORD.

Of course, they could understand me in Swedish, so when I went to the restaurant, I just kinda guessed what they were saying from their body language.

Lycka till, Kool!

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I assume Danish is relatively easy for an English-speaker to learn, like German?

I don't believe these words have ever been found in the same sentence. When I was learning German during an exchange, I thought it'd be easy for me to learn, what with knowing English.

I was wrong. (Though I was victorious in the end!)

[SignalHillHiker]

Turkish is like that too. Hungarian.

I love lyric videos for songs in languages like that. Cracks me up.

• Video Link

But ones that are the opposite are easy to learn. Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian are like that. There's nothing that's pronounced differently. If you learn how to pronounce each letter, you can say any word correctly. You might put the emphasis on the wrong syllable, but otherwise you'll be correct.

• Video Link

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by lio45

I personally know many unilingual Anglos in the Townships...



Necessary, no, courteous, yes.



That's one of the main arguments for turning Quebec into an unilingual country once and for all. We wouldn't care at all whether or not it's fair that we can't be served in our language somewhere else, and would more gladly switch to English and/or encourage its use as it would then be much less of a threat.

Americans can be served in English in Stockholm, Swedes can't be served in Swedish in NYC, but the two aren't politically united so 'more useful' English is never going to displace 'less useful' Swedish in the long run. So, the Swedes don't really have a reason to be worried about the 'unfairness'.

Most people don't fully realize just how much the Quebec separatist movement would take a fatal hit if the number of unilingual anglos (and also allophones who insist on using English all the time - including with francophones of course) plummeted dramatically here.

The significant increase in the number of bilingual anglophones and also allophones their eagerness to use French (and the corresponding increase in the use of French in Quebec overall, especially in Montreal), is one of the main reasons the Oui did not win in 1995.

In a sense, Bill 101, a creation of the PQ, was successful enough to effectively torpedo the PQ's sovereignty option in 1995.

Even though it's rarely discussed in election campaigns as a major issue and does not really show up in polls of the issues Quebecers are concerned with, it's still the biggest elephant in the room and a key determinant of whether they think being within Canada is something they can be comfortable with.

We shall see how the demographics (and situation on the streets) evolves over the next few years, but my sense is that many anglophones and allophones don't fully realize how much their behaviour will affect the fortunes of the sovereignist movement and a united Canada.

[SignalHillHiker]

I continued this conversation on FB with a friend from Bosnia. I asked him why, if Slavic languages are so similar, are certain phrases, such as "Thank you" so different in, say, Bosnian, Polish, and Russian. Three completely different words.

I don't know what answer I was expecting, but this cracked me up and made me feel stupid:

"Culturally, we say different things. One is "Bless you", one is "Thank you", another "My pleasure", but we can understand all of the ones that aren't borrowed from neighbour languages. Like Polish "Thank you" is half German, but of course everyone knows German, so... no problem."

*****

This has to be the stereotypical rural accent:

• Video Link

Going up like that randomly in sentences is completely rural. It's strange for such a dominant linguistic trait to be completely absent from St. John's, but it is.

This comedian even hits on it. As soon as he does it ("OMG, s'some hard!"), the audience loses it:

• Video Link

(Baygirls = Rural women; Downtownies = Urban women)

*****

One other anecdote, when jeddy1989 and I attended the grand opening gala for 351, Mayor Denis O'Keefe (born and raised in old St. John's) got up to speak.

He started just by saying, "Well..."

And, instantly, jeddy and I turned to each other laughing. He put about 8 syllables into that one word. It's a VERY old money St. John's thing to do.

[wg_flamip]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

I continued this conversation on FB with a friend from Bosnia. I asked him why, if Slavic languages are so similar, are certain phrases, such as "Thank you" so different in, say, Bosnian, Polish, and Russian. Three completely different words.

I don't know what answer I was expecting, but this cracked me up and made me feel stupid:

"Culturally, we say different things. One is "Bless you", one is "Thank you", another "My pleasure", but we can understand all of the ones that aren't borrowed from neighbour languages. Like Polish "Thank you" is half German, but of course everyone knows German, so... no problem."

Funny that you see the same thing with the Romance languages - merci, gracias, obrigado, etc.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

There's one commercial here, on the radio, with a reference that doesn't make sense. He speaks with a thick accent talking about lobster, and says it was just like his childhood, and then his friend says, "Didn't you grow up in X?" but X is a completely foreign place. I've never heard of it before in my life.

I heard the English version this morning on the radio.

It's a(n) approximate Irish accent for sure. Much more than a Newfoundland one. Although he does say by's at the start which most Canadians would identify as a Newfoundland thing.

The people who produced that were probably a bit clueless.

[SignalHillHiker]

They certainly were. It still baffles me that they think anyone here has even heard of Comox? I thought they were mis-pronouncing Claddagh or something.

[Xelebes]

Originally Posted by kool maudit

danish isn't that complicated but it is very hard to learn because of the pronunciation: words never sound like they are spelled. "hyggelig" is pronounced (something like) "hoogulee"; "amager" is "amar".

Fun note: the g in Danish is similar to the gh (or y) in English. The double g is like the g and gg in English.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

They certainly were. It still baffles me that they think anyone here has even heard of Comox? I thought they were mis-pronouncing Claddagh or something.

Still don't understand why they picked Comox of all places. It's actually on salt water (Georgia Strait) and not exactly an obviously non-maritime location. (Although there are no lobsters there of course.)

Maybe someone on the production team was from there...

[SignalHillHiker]

That's probably correct. It'd have to be? Would anyone else think of that?

[Architype]

Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker

They certainly were. It still baffles me that they think anyone here has even heard of Comox? I thought they were mis-pronouncing Claddagh or something.

Unknown in the east, but it's not really that obscure - it's part of a metro area (Courtenay) of 55,000!
Then nobody east of the Rockies probably heard of Courtenay either!
Vancouver island manages to be unknown territory to most Canadians.

[ue]

Originally Posted by Architype

Unknown in the east, but it's not really that obscure - it's part of a metro area (Courtenay) of 55,000!
Then nobody east of the Rockies probably heard of Courtenay either!
Vancouver island manages to be unknown territory to most Canadians.

I don't know about that. There's a lot of territory east of the Rockies. Many Albertans are very familiar with "The Island" and regularly vacation in Courtenay, Victoria, Tofino, Comox, and Nanaimo. Saskatchewan and Manitoba seem to have similar relationships with BC, although a bit less the further east you go. Ontario is kind of middle ground, but I'm guessing east of Ottawa, people are less likely to have heard of cities in BC beyond Victoria, Nanaimo, Vancouver, and Kelowna.