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Canadian pronunciation guide for Americans


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As the build's international liaison, and in an effort to build lasting relations between neighbors, I feel it is my duty to inform non-Canadians on the proper pronunciations of certain words. Because if you're going to build like a Canadian, you should at least be able to speak like one as well, eh?

Below is a sampling of the Vancouver-ese I've picked up since I moved up to the borderlands. Feel free to add more

Semi - A large truck, pronounced seh-me. "Hey hoser, switch lanes and get ahead of that semi

Mazda - A Japanese car manufacturer; rhymes with "has the"

Mario Brothers - Video game franchise about two Italian plumbers; pronounced "Mare-yo"

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When I moved to the US in 2006 I never thought I said eh as much as I did.

I will say I have been harassed about the semi thing...lol

ABOUT - pronounced A-Boot

Toyota Celica - pronounced Sa-lee-ca ......down here it is called a sell-i-ca

I thought they were being goofs down here when they told me about that one......then after a few yrs I started hearing my family when I talked to them on the phone.........then again.....I am 1st generation Canadian from family in England, Scotland, and yes even Ireland......what a mix...lol

and for the love of Pete.....it is a ROOF.......not a RUFF........

and a creek....not a crick........lol

Edited by RescueDiver
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The two that got me, and still get me every now and then, as an engineer are process and composites. pro-cess/praw-cess and compisites/com-paw-sites. I guess it's the 'merican drawl or something....I didn't really pick up the accent while living there, but for some reason when my wife was really tired she would slip into it....

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To further this thread, when a Canadian says thanks to someone who has helped him/her the Canadian response is most often "You're welcome," while the American response is "Uh huh." Also, Nanaimo,the city in the middle of the east coast of Vancouver Island is pronounced "Nan-eye-mo" not "Nan-eeee-aim-o," while the ferry terminal location at Tsawwassen to Victoria from the mainland is "T-was-sen," not "T-wash-was-sen."

English speakers of the world - divided by a common language. :worship:

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To further this thread, when a Canadian says thanks to someone who has helped him/her the Canadian response is most often "You're welcome," while the American response is "Uh huh." Also, Nanaimo,the city in the middle of the east coast of Vancouver Island is pronounced "Nan-eye-mo" not "Nan-eeee-aim-o," while the ferry terminal location at Tsawwassen to Victoria from the mainland is "T-was-sen," not "T-wash-was-sen."

English speakers of the world - divided by a common language. :woot.gif:

The T is silent in Tsawwassen.....Sa-wah-sin.....as for Nanaimo....I've always pronounced it Nah-nai-mo.

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On the topic of modeling and the Canadian pronunciation.... What the heck is a dee-kal? Up north we call it a deh-cal... ie decal :) .

Oh, and about tur-bin. Being in the aviation profession we call it Tur-bine in Canada. Since I'm involved with FedEx Canada and am in touch with the Memphis Maintenance Operations Control Centre on a frequent basis I always get a kick out of hearing tur-bine called tur-bin.

Ciao, eh!

John

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And how about the letter 'Z' pronounced Zed in Canada. So and Iroc Z-28 is an Iroc Zed-28 unlike the Southern Zee-28 Eh.

Funny how spellings are different too.....

Like Armour as opposed to Armor or Honour to Honor.

How about that metric thing Eh????

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Taking the DC-3 N34 into Prince George B.C. in 05 on a VFR flight we reported airport in site and the controller cleared us for the approach. Ever see a cockpit full of question marks floating around? In the US the term "cleared for the approach" ususally only associated with an IFR approach on an IFR flightplan. After a pregnant pause the good controller asked N34 did you copy the clearance? Again phrases associated with only IFR flight. The AC replied with yes...but...we're not on an IFR approach, The controller corrected us that we were on a VFR approach and that we were cleared for the VFR approach. One way to overstate the obvious. Logical but redundant.

Then the Canadian Customs guy makes us wait on the plane for 45 minutes before he just calls us and tells us it's ok to leave the plane!

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ABOUT - pronounced A-Boot

Toyota Celica - pronounced Sa-lee-ca ......down here it is called a sell-i-ca

I thought they were being goofs down here when they told me about that one......then after a few yrs I started hearing my family when I talked to them on the phone.........then again.....I am 1st generation Canadian from family in England, Scotland, and yes even Ireland......what a mix...lol

I'm afraid I have to disagree with the A-boot thing. That is common with people from Scotland and/or Ireland, but most Canadians (including me) say a-bowt, just like Americans. Every time I hear this on "How I Met Your Mother", I cringe. I don't mind stereotypes, but at least the shows should get them right.

I suspect that this is a regional thing in Canada - like the Maritimes, where pronunciations follow some of the Scottish conventions, while the rest of the country is more North American for about and other such words.

I also pronounce Celica as Sell-i-ca, but sometimes I say Sell-ee-ca.

Pasta is 'pass-tah' in Canada; 'paw-sta' in the US.

For sure the 'out' sound in about, thought, ought, etc is different. Canadians say it more like 'owt', while some Americans say 'awt'.

Another sound that is different is 'en'. Example: Canuck will say 'ten' yards, while an American football commentator will tend to say 'tin' yards. Ten nuhssee (Cdn) vice Tinnissee (US) pronunciations.

And another classic - Canadians pronounce Toronto 'Torronna' or even 'Tronna'

Canadians will pronounce clearly 'didn't'; Texans and some others will say 'dih-n't' and the d becomes almost silent.

And to further add to the confusion, as Ken Middleton and others have pointed out to me, there sometimes are more similarities between bordering regions North/South that there are East/West in both countries. Brothers we truly are.

This translation thing is fun. I recall teaching academic courses about business jets to pilots from various countries, and smiling as the Aussies and Brits traded insults with each other while the Americans looked puzzled. "Poofta" and "Pom" were foreign to our Southern friends...

ALF

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Another word that causes me to chuckle is the word 'asked'....... and I hear from our southern friends Axed...... Well here in Canada if you said 'I Axed him' it would be an admission of guilt for assault or murder.

Ohhhhh and this Name...... Brett Favre pronounced FARV. Chuckle every time.

But yes pronunciations are regional as well as some ethnicity.

Now ask a French person to say 'Thirty Three' (Terty Tree ) or 'Thunder' (Tunder) or even 'Hey There' ('ey Dare) ...... Get my wife with those ones every time.

:rofl:

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Taking the DC-3 N34 into Prince George B.C. in 05 on a VFR flight we reported airport in site and the controller cleared us for the approach. Ever see a cockpit full of question marks floating around? In the US the term "cleared for the approach" ususally only associated with an IFR approach on an IFR flightplan. After a pregnant pause the good controller asked N34 did you copy the clearance? Again phrases associated with only IFR flight. The AC replied with yes...but...we're not on an IFR approach, The controller corrected us that we were on a VFR approach and that we were cleared for the VFR approach. One way to overstate the obvious. Logical but redundant.

Then the Canadian Customs guy makes us wait on the plane for 45 minutes before he just calls us and tells us it's ok to leave the plane!

I'm very unfamiliar with American VFR procedures. I was always reluctant to cancel IFR, because there were so many runways and airports packed together in the US that it was not unheard of to end up landing on the wrong runway.

In Canada, military and civil airports have differing VFR procedures for controlled airfields like Victoria or Comox.

Civilian: must call prior to entering control zone. Tower should clear you into the Zone, and ask you to call base or final, depending on where you're coming from. In some cases, there are VFR reporting points that you are sent to and asked to call passing. Tower will always clear sequence you as you make a mandatory call (i.e. call base, and they will say 'cleared to land' if it's OK, or 'follow the C-172 at 3 miles', etc. They sometimes want a read-back, especially if the aircraft is a visitor and Tower wants to make sure they've understood what they should do. In the case where there is no traffic, 'cleared for the approach' probably is a lazy way of them saying not to bother to call until you want landing clearance, because there's no traffic. I've even been cleared to land from 20 miles out, as I came rocketing in at 400 plus knots VFR.

Military: also must call prior to the control zone. Twr will clear you to 'call initial' or 'call final' depending if you asked for an overhead break or straight-in. For the break, you call 'initial', twr gives you your sequence 'number one' or 'number 3, follow the straight-in at 5 miles', then you call base and you get landing clearance. Straight in you call 3 miles and they give you landing clearance.

Bummer about the Customs. I've lived through that too, returning from the States to Canada.

ALF

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Emvar, you're refering to southernese. Y'all done gone went assumin all us Amer'kuns be talkin' like that. Y'all shoul ax next tom, or Ima get my dawg and have im go n' git you. :rofl:

ALF: When I listen to Radio from Vancouver, a goodly number of the DJs do say aboowt; so I'm not sure its exclusively a Maritimes thing

Now go build your models guys. (Says the guy who still hasn't picked a topic for his build)

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Ohhhhh and this Name...... Brett Favre pronounced FARV. Chuckle every time.

Now ask a French person to say 'Thirty Three' (Terty Tree ) or 'Thunder' (Tunder) or even 'Hey There' ('ey Dare) ...... Get my wife with those ones every time.

:rofl:

How about that singer, Caillat? I would pronounce that Ky-at; I hear the announcers on XM Radio (US) saying Call-ate. I can only assume that's how she pronounces her name...

We often used a UHF chat frequency called "French Forest." Why? It was 333.3 (tree-tree-tree-tree).

ALF

Edited by ALF18
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ALF: When I listen to Radio from Vancouver, a goodly number of the DJs do say aboowt; so I'm not sure its exclusively a Maritimes thing

Now go build your models guys. (Says the guy who still hasn't picked a topic for his build)

Interesting. Maybe I do say aboot without knowing it - but I tend to pronounce it a lot like sitcom actors (How I Met Your Mother, Rules of Engagement, etc). Could it have something to do with 'awt' versus 'owt'?

Now back to modelling - enough time wasted.

ALF

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Emvar, you're refering to southernese. Y'all done gone went assumin all us Amer'kuns be talkin' like that. Y'all shoul ax next tom, or Ima get my dawg and have im go n' git you. :)

Assumption is the same both ways isn't it? :P BTW Nice Doggy.

Now go build your models guys. (Says the guy who still hasn't picked a topic for his build)

Ite .... Ain't that Southernese for alright??? <_<

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I love this topic. It's funny to get people's impressions on this. I used to be hooked on a terrible on-line game where several of us would set up on a program called ventrilo. Sort of like skype, you could 'voice chat' with a large group of folks. Usually half to three quarters of the particiapnts were from the US, and this topic came up once in a while. It was funny to listen to the perceptions each had of each other. It also reminds me when my best buddy and I drove to Vegas 2 years. Along the way we'd stop for food, and sometimes get into conversations with the workers. When we told them we were driving to Vegas from Canada, more often than not they'd say, "oh cool.....do your accent!!!" We'd just laugh and say, "what accent??" But for entertainment value we'd launch into a 'Bob n Doug McKenzie routine.

Honestly in the 41 years I've existed on the prairies of Canada, I've yet to come across someone who actually said "a-boot" when saying about. But equally, I always loved to give my US counterparts the business when it came to, "then I axed what his names was" or "and then he ex-scaped from the pole-ees" - so it goes both ways.

By the way, last year I saw Zed Zed Top in concert in Calgary......awesome show they put on!! :whistle:

Edited by Tilt
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OH OH oh......I almost forgot another one that used to get debated ALL THE TIME for me....lol

In Canada, we go the fridge and grab a 'pop' ...... in the US, they go the fridge and grab a 'soda' !! This one was constantly debated over while playing that terrible on-line game I played. lol

Edited by Tilt
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Haha - good ones Max. We still call them 'napkins' in our household. And I had never heard of poutine prior to it becoming nationally popular about 10 years ago. And even then, we understood it to be an Eastern Canadian thing. :whistle:

I think we called it a "chesterfield" when I was a young kid, but growing up that changed to "couch". Now it's either sofa or couch.

This is a hilarious thread!!

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