Quote:
Originally Posted by Vulcan
Yeah, I mostly agree. Americans think we say aboot but we actually don't. I think what this Canadian classification in this survey is, is what Americans think a Canadian accent is.
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Canadians have an about-moat merger. Or at least a pronunciation of about tending towards that merger.
Canadians just don't say "about" like Americans. I've never heard it in my life. Seriously, you may think you do, but you just don't. Unless you have American parents, then maybe.
And, fwiw, the correct Canadian pronunciation of "pasta" is pass-ta. Foreign loan words in Canadian English are pronounced like "cat", not "father". If you say it differently, then you are not speaking Canadian English, but some other dialect. Personally I'm Canadian, so I'll speak Canadian and feel justified in saying anybody that says "pah-sta" is just plain wrong when it comes to Canadian English. I think the key is that the word "pasta" is not an Italian word, it is a foreign loan word in the English language. We pronounce it differently because we are speaking English, not Italian.
Also, I know a guy from Ontario that says full oot "aboot". 99.9% of us don't say that though. We say "a-boat", or at the very least a much softer version of the american "a-bowt".
Seriously, I'm like an accent nazi. I notice the littlest things that nobody else but a linguist would ever notice. I know Canadian English. And I'm from the coast where Canadian English is gradually being merged with west coast American English.
This quiz is not what "Americans think we talk like". I speak Canadian, the answer it gave me was Canadian. All the questions are perfectly fair and quite diagnostic IMO.