Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
Mainland just means "Rest of Canada". It's a common term here:
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I'm not understanding this of the word "mainland." You're lumping 99% of a 35 million-strong country into the category "mainland" when nobody in that 99% would ever use that term or have a clue what you're talking about?
1.3 billion mainland Chinese know the term "mainland" because 1.3 billion Chinese are intimately familiar with the history and connotations of the term, and it has a provenance that has leaked into English such that, lacking any other context, in English it is generally understood to mean "mainland China."
Not "mainland Canada," whatever that means. Canada has many offshore islands. Using the term "mainland" to mean "anywhere outside of Newfoundland" makes zero sense to people living "anywhere outside of Newfoundland." Why on earth would you use this term on a site like this?
Quote:
Originally Posted by SignalHillHiker
I just meant the accent sounds stereotypically "Rest of Canada" to me. I assume I'm not the only one, since that's how it's labelled by the people posting/sharing that video. There are lots of different accents there but a lot of the vowel sounds and the way he goes up in random places are pretty universal on the mainland. Especially when Mike says "island". He goes up in the S.
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Canada is pretty unique for not having many huge differences in accents across such large geographical area, including Newfoundland (which is certainly uniquely different, but it's nowhere near like the differences you encounter driving an hour somewhere in the UK, say). I'm starting to think that this hoser thing really is mostly rural Ontario.
Though then again, you've got the hoserific examples of baitcar.com and that pseudodocumentary in Alberta where they say "give'er." So I don't know. It's hard to draw definite lines on the map for accents in Canada.