Hey you! Canadian TB'ers

The Ottawa Valley has a very distinct accent. Toronto has a bit of an accent, but it wouldn't differ from that of Windsor; all of Southern Ontario has a similar accent. Albertans talk faster and have a bit of a drawl. Newfies have the most accent of anywhere in Canada. Overall, I would say that that US has a wider variety of accents than Canada does.

lowsound

 

I've looked into this a bit myself, and having traveled through much of the country, the east coast has the most diversity for sure. The spread of English into western Canada is quite recent, not much more than 150 years old, so there hasn't been a lot of time for distinctive accents to develop here.

One area that is often overlooked when it comes to Canadian dialects are the First Nations populations which often have distinctive accents and vocabulary. But it is usually stigmatized and so doesn't get much study.

 

Windsor is a border city, so in comparison with those in most of other parts of Ontario, our particular vernacular is slightly more "americanized" than in other parts of ontario - we tend to say "sawry" and not "sorry", and I've noticed that most people past essex county tend to say "chesterfield" instead of "couch", not big difference, for the most part the accent is the same, but it's slightly different. As for the rest of Canada, I've noticed that the eastern maritimes provinces seem to have the most of an accent, and those in quebec do obviously have an accent when they speak english (and in the countryside of quebe, IF they speak english). To be honest, the most I can say regarding "accents" or vernaculars is relevant to Windsor.

 

Lots of accents here in Montreal - usually resulting from people fumbling around in a language that isn't their own.

 

I've only heard different accents on either ocean side. The newfies have a weird, half gypsy, half irish accent. The people out in BC have a different way of pronouncing words with long vowels.

Oh, and Quebec has a slight accent. We call it "French"

 

So who says "abooot" and who says "aboat?"

 

Easy on the accent generalizations there Alabama

But, I've never heard anyone say aboot, or aboat (That's a new one)

 

Me neither. I don't know where that stereotype comes from (I'm guessing Newfoundland but I've never been there).

 

It's a fact that many anglophone Canadians west of Quebec pronounce the vowel in "about" differently than many Americans. To a Canadian it doesn't sound anything like "aboot" but to an American who doesn't do it, it might.

Try saying these pairs of words to yourself:

loud ~ lout
crowd ~ Kraut
bowed ~ bout (the first one "bow" as in bending forward)
Dowd ~ doubt

If you are Canadian, if you pay careful attention you should notice that the vowel sounds are not exactly the same between the two words in each pair. If you're American, they might very well be much the same.

 

Not saying it's bad! In my intensive studies of various cultures (watching Ice Road Truckers) it seems that's what I hear.

 

So would the Ottawa Valley accent be similar to.. maybe a New York accent for us Americans? In terms of the pronunciation?

 

I am not sure how to describe it. My wife's family is from the Ottawa Valley and I can really hear it when I am with them.

lowsound

 

I don't know the Ottawa area well myself, but the Wikipedia page suggests there's an Irish connection, so it's probably not connected to New York overly much.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Valley_Twang#section_2

 

I'm not saying that they sound the same, I'm saying in terms of the difference in pronunciation. Like, how you have "aw-zum" instead of "awesome" if you're from certain areas. Is there a huge difference between Ottawan and regular Canadian-English?

 

Well, your test didn't work on me!

 

If you did a recording and ran it through a spectrographic analysis, you might be surprised!

 

I don't think there are huge differences until you get to the Maritimes and Newfoundland.

 

Agreed.

lowsound

 

I can hear subtle differences of our Eastern Canadian brothers. Living in Vancouver, I find it quite amusing how just an hour south of us, the US accent /word choice is very noticeable. Just 5 minutes over the border and hear and see many cultural differences too.