I see...

[Neophobic Man]

Eh...?

[Jadian]

Well, as one of our resident Linguistic students, I can tell you a few things that are uniquely Canadian.

First of all, Canadians pronounce Tuesday differently. Just say it out loud, pay attention to the first syllable. Also, Canadians tend to pronounce anti differently; as in anti-biotic. We also pronounce missile differently, although this is not true across the board. Say each of those out loud and pay attention to your vowels.

Second of all, we're the only English dialect that uses "eh" with no inflection during a sentence, as in "So it's a pretty big husky eh and its mother was even bigger eh so we're thinking maybe three hundred pounds eh, when she's finished growing." Other dialects use "so" and "like" and "uhm" instead; and other dialects use the raised inflection at the end of a sentence "Not too shabby, eh?" But the random insertion is pure Canadian.

Thirdly, Canadians sometimes switch the adjective and noun placement, which is a trick we get from the French. Thus, we have Parks Canada and not Canada Parks.

Okay, back to the pronunciation.

Tuesday
Canadians: Chewsday (we have the only rising dipthong in the English language)
Americans: Tooseday

Anti-biotic
Canadian: antee biotic
American Ant-i biotic

Missile
Canadian: Missle
American: Miss aisle

Although a Canadian will say fragile: fraj -aisle and not frajl. So it's word specific. There are a few American dialects that do the same pronunciation, and because of tv a lot of Canadians use American pronunciation, but there it is.

[JaceSan]

I pronuounce them missls. Don't know about the rest of this country. o_O

[Jelymo]

how did i manage to forget that jade was a linguistics geek like me? yeeesh...

i think i alternate between missl and miss-aile (i wish i knew the codes for the actual phonetic alphabet). and i just realized that i really do say chews-day, but it's not a really heavily pronounced ch. my dad does it really thick, but he's a newf.

should we explain Canadian Raising to them? *grin*

[Ski]

so the two people who founded canada couldn't think of a name right, so they put all the letters of the alphabet in a hat. and the one said, we will pull out 3 letters and that will be the name, so the first on is pulled and the guy says: "C" eh. then the next one gets pulled and he says: "N" eh. and then the last one and he says: "D" eh.

and that is how Canada got it's name. [img]smile.gif[/img]

true story [img]wink.gif[/img]

[Jelymo]

that's SO old. [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Ski]

but still DAMN funny [img]wink.gif[/img]

[Dan the Goob]

I listen to a Canadian radio station sometimes, and besides the accent/pronounciation differences, I've noticed some phrasing differences as well. The only one I can think of at the moment is accident victims are "in hospital" where in American that would be in THE hospital"

Is the term "hydro" when referring to the electrical utility company a universal Canadian thing, or is that just Southern Ontario?

Also, while "eh" is certainly common, I don't think its nearly as much so as American or Canadian commedians would like you to think. [img]wink.gif[/img]

Dan

[Jelymo]

i think "hydro" is more southern ontario, but i could be wrong ...

you know what's funny? i was going to mention the "in hospital" thing. my roommate commented on that one day, cuz i do it. it's from old english, and from what i've been told it's used more out east.

oh, and ski? [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Jadian]

Yeah, Americans add definate articles ("the" and "a") to things...

Canadian: We flew through clouds to reach 30,000 feet.
American: We flew through the clouds to reach 30,000 feet.

Another remnant of British English some Canucks use is "an" before a silent h.
Canadian: this is an historic moment
American: this is a historic moment (pronounced like "eh", often with the h pronounced also)