Posted on 08/04/2015 10:51:55 AM PDT by rickmichaels
Out with “oot.” No more “aboot.” Canada is talking with a New Speak. In a linguistic pivot called the Canadian Vowel Shift, we are pronouncing “God” more like “gawd,” “bagel” like “bahgel,” “pillow” like “pellow,” and “sorry” less like “sore-y.” The word “Timbit” is becoming “Tembet,” and “Dan slipped on the staircase” now sounds more like “Don” “slept” on it. First discovered in 1995, the new vowels are contagious, spreading rapidly from Victoria to St. John’s, where linguists are mapping the frequency of people’s voices and using ultrasounds to track their tongue and lip placement.
“We’re in the middle of a transformation,” says Paul De Decker, a sociolinguist at Memorial University of Newfoundland. “Our vowels are getting higher and backer in the mouth, and it’s more widespread, more diverse than we initially thought.”
Some linguists compare the shift to “Valley Girl” speech, which is perhaps most dramatically demonstrated by an American comedian in the hit YouTube video, “Shoes.” The chorus, “Shoes. Oh my God, shoes,” sounds more like, “Shahs, ah my gawd, shahs.” More mildly in Canada, we find the shift in the Air Canada pre-flight safety video when we hear, “Welcome aboard Air Canada.” Compared to a 1986 version, the “Canada” is now pronounced farther back in the mouth, like “Cahnadah.”
These changes in the mouth are happening under our noses. Even though the new pronunciation is used every day, almost nobody has heard of it—not the president of Canada’s association of university and college English teachers, nor the national director of Teachers of English as a Second Language. As it creeps into our speech under the level of social awareness, the vowel shift is known as a “change from below,” with a suspected epicentre in urban Ontario.
Wait, what the hall? De Decker explains the shift as a result of Canadian tolerance. As immigrants and visitors arrive with different accents, we have come to tolerate variation and to play with language ourselves. “If we weren’t tolerant,” he says, “we would crack down and say, ‘No, that’s not how it’s pronounced.’ Instead, we’ve started to push the envelope even further.”
With young women initially leading the shift, some experts suggest they subconsciously adopted it from California as a way to portray a more trendy identity. De Decker says the new Canadian vowels only partly resemble Valley Girl speech, and that the similarities may be coincidental; still, he agrees the new vowels are in vogue. “It’s like a badge saying, ‘These are all the people I’ve met, and I have the vowel system to prove it.’ ”
The Canadian Vowel Shift has now shot far beyond urban youth. One study heard the shift to be equally advanced in Thunder Bay as in Toronto, and others have found it among seniors as old as 90. “People who don’t consider themselves innovative or hip are showing it,” says De Decker. We can even hear it in the Corner Gas theme song: “You think there’s not a lot goin’ on, but look closer, baby, you’re so wrong.” The “think” almost sounds like “thenk,” and “lot” is more like “lawt.”
The first person to discover the shift, Sandra Clarke, a linguist at Memorial University, says Canadians have long held potential for a change in their speech, based on their relaxed pronounciations of many words. For example, we say “cough” without the harsh “quaff” sound that might make us crank our heads in the U.S., and we say “caught” the same as “cot,” without pronouncing the a or u at all. “When you have open space like that, vowels don’t have to stay in their places,” says Clarke. “The opportunity is there for new ones to move in.”
Scholars debate which vowels have changed the most. Clarke thinks the consonants within words affect whether or not we shift our pronunciation of the vowels. The shift is most obvious, she says, in words with fricatives, which are letter combinations such as “th” and “sh.” “Shovel” is more like “shawvel,” and “thank you” resembles “thahnk you.” “I wouldn’t be surprised if fricatives are in the lead,” she says.
Although these sneaky vowels might jeopardize the sound of Canada’s iconic lingo, they are also helping unite us. Since the same change is happening in Red Deer as in Montreal, we may find decreasing distinction between accents. For bilingual people, the new pronunciation could even get carried over into their French, leading to more similarities in the sounds of the two languages. The English version of “baguette” stops rhyming with “vague-ette,” and “decor” stops resembling “de-core.” Meanwhile, the shift is distinguishing Canada even more from the U.S., where an estimated 34 million people around the Great Lakes Region are showing an opposite change called the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. There, God is becoming “gad,” “Dan” is becoming “din,” “slipped” is getting closer to “slapped,” and “sorry” more like “sarry.”
Aside from perhaps making spelling bees tougher, the current vowel shifts may well have lasting significance. The Great Vowel Shift of the 14th- to 18th centuries marked the leap from Middle to Modern English, with Norman pronunciations rapidly changing words such as “lake” to no longer rhyme with “latté,” as they do in other Germanic languages. That shift was responsible for most of the irregularities in English—the thousands of words pronounced differently than they are spelled. The changes today could lead to even more oddities in English in Canada and the U.S. Vowel shifts are messy.
Young people in Canada are also dropping the “zed” in favor of the Americanized “zee”. Causing much angst to their elders.
Out here in Southern California, most of us pronounce “marry,” “merry” and “Mary” exactly the same, and the same goes for “cot” and “caught.” “Any” rhymes with “tinny,” “end” rhymes with “Sindh,” and “anti-” as in “anti-Bolshevik” is pronounced “ant eye.”
She's was absolutely not lying to you. That is more a New Yorker term.
My friend brought a California girl home with him one time, and we all went to an old abandoned limestone quarry to go cliff jumping. I have never before or since heard anyone say the word "Quarry" the same way. I can't even begin to duplicate the way she said it... because "kwawr-ee" is so deeply ingrained for me... as is CAW-fee, and Wood-ur, and oh, I dunno what else.
I have heard that there is also a move to reform Canadian orthography by removing the "u" from words such as "colour" and the "ue" from words like "catalogue."
We’ll have to wait until Obama says “Canada” in a speech, then we will have a definitive ruling on the pronunciation.
I used to DVR the Prairie Farm Report on RFD-TV... I was amazed by the way they pronounced the word "Produce" with a "short O", and the word "Progress" with a "long O".... totally opposite of American English.
I'm from Pittsburgh and think it's funny that you just expect people to know how to pronounce "Sindh."
Should confess....I was born a Yooper - there isn't much difference :)
Pittsburgh Penguins’ coach Mike Johnston is a perfect example of the “classic” Canadian accent.
Always willing to tell you how much PROH-gress the or-guh-nye-ZAY-shun is making.
You're from South Jersey, or as I like to think of it, The Hoagie Belt, right?
But you know, until you come to an agreement regarding koo-pon vs kYOO-pon, there can be no shalom in the home.
A jew told me that. I believe him.
We’re sah-ry, eh ???
Eh ???
You have no effin idea how much I miss a New Jersey Italian Hoagie.
Out here in NW PA at one sandwich shop I went to, I ordered an Italian (Which I pronounce "eh-TAL-yun", and they call it an "EYE-tal-yan"). Pretty much ordered it regular style... Lettuce, tomato, onion; Oil & Vinegar; salt, pepper and oregano...
When I got it, 1) it was almost all bread and no cold cuts, 2) the lettuce was shredded, and 3) without me prompting them to, they decided to toast it.
WHO THE HELL DOES THAT??? MMMMMmmm! Warm, vinegary, oiled up lettuce with my provolone cheese and salami!
Ew. Yuck. P.U.
That's like talking a perfectly good porkroll, egg and cheese sammich on a Calandra's bakery Kaiser roll and RUINING it with ketchup!
That’s funny. In the Boston area, they’d put pickles on it!
That whole “zee” vs. “Zed” thing had me looking like an idiot in Halifax many years ago. I had a furniture salesman yelling ZED ZED ZED at me. Finally it clicked.
Oh, “zee” I replied. He was exhausted, trying to tell me the Postal code.
The only other word I could think of that rhymed was “wind,” but that could also be pronounced so that it rhymes with “hind,” “bind” or “blind.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.