Talk:West/Central Canadian English
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Contents |
[edit] Father-bother merger
Here we go again. Would someone please explain to me and the world why large numbers of people in the linguistics and Wikipedia world seem to think that [Central/Western] Canadian English has undergone this merger, and, more to the point, why they seem to think that 'ɒ' has merged to 'ɑ' as in General American and not the other way around? My pronunciation of father and that of most everyone else I hear is /fɑðɜr/ though I occasionally hear /fɒðɜr/. Bother is almost always /bɒðɜr/ and almost never /bɑðɜr/. The Canadian Oxford Dictionary tends to agree, listing 'ɒ' for both (which admittedly does make its treatment of words with 'ɑ' a bit suspect).
To my ears, one of the quickest ways to "spot an American" is to listen for their pronunciation of "short O"s - if it sounds like a broad A (ɑ) they're almost certainly an American. Indeed, when I was last in Britain I was correctly tagged as a Canadian by one slightly more observant-than-average Brit who remarked that I didn't pronounce my 'O's oddly. This odd American pronunciation of 'O's has apparently even caused some Canadian school children consternation in spelling bees where the reader was American. Another example is one of the Edward Jones financial planning television adverts currently running (I think it was the one where the psychologist speaks an Eastern European language) where the person doing the voiceover can be heard to pronounce "stock" not as /stɒk/ but as /stɑk/ or even /stak/ so that it sounds like the word is actually "stack". Why someone didn't think to get a Canadian to do the voiceover is a good question.
I've written about this before in the Canadian English discussion with respect to the cot-caught merger. We merge these alright, but not to /kɑt/ (or kɔt) but to /kɒt/ (I actually do distinguish these slightly in that I hold the vowel sound of caught slightly longer than that of cot (ie /kɒ:t/ vs /kɒt/)).
It's possible the Canadian 'ɒ' is not quite the same as the British 'ɒ' but it is definitely closer to that than it is to the American pronunciation of 'ɑ'. All of this matters because we also have in this article this - IMHO - dubious "Canadian Shift" business whereby some words that are 'ɒ' in RP but 'ɑ' in GA are apparently shifting back to 'ɒ' in CE. This is quite amusing since, to the extent that we have any shift at all, it is from 'ɒ' to 'ɑ' and not from 'ɑ' to 'ɒ', though I suppose if one was an American and simply assumed that CE must use 'ɑ' then it might seem like a shift, especially if you hear some Canadians using 'ɑ'. Indeed, the line "Canadians without the Shift typically pronounce cot and caught with the original pronunciation that existed after the merger: an un-rounded [ɑ]..." is particularly enlightening in this regard with respect to what it regards as the "original pronunciation". --D P J 06:30, 22 June 2006 (UTC)
- Completely agree. In fact, here in Chicago you can hear people say 'stock' as [stæk]. ('Stack' is pronounced with a diphthong, [stɛək].)
- However, I have heard plenty of Canadians saying [fɒðɚ]; in fact, /ɑ/ carries almost no functional load in Canadian English. The proof that there's something like a father-bother merger, for me, is that in Canada people use /æ/ rather than /ɑ/ to assimilate foreign words using /a/: for example, Nicaragua, pasta, Zimbabwe (and also drama, even though I don't think of this as a foreign word). It seems to me that the Toronto-area Canadians I've known have some sense of /ɑ/, but essentially never use it.
- I even had one UofT linguistics teacher who insisted that <ɑ> was the symbol for [ɒ] (in words like cot and caught!). QuartierLatin1968
21:47, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Pronunciation of buoy
Many Canadians (including myself) pronounce buoy not as /bɔɪ/ ("boy") but rather as /bu:i/ (literally "boo-ee" but with the 'oo' and 'ee' sounds run together as one). I grew up in Ottawa but I'm not sure if this is from the Ottawa area or from the Kingston area where my mother is from. Does anyone have any idea how extensive this pronunciation is in Canada (I have heard it on CBC) and whether or not this is particular to Canada? The Canadian Oxford Dictionary is in agreement on this one.
- Hmm. That's the standard pronunciation in Alabama and North Dakota as well.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greetingz (talk • contribs).
[edit] Pronunciation of tour
Perhaps owing to the influence of French, tour in Canada seems to be pronounced as /tuər/ rather than the /tʊ(ə)r/ of American and British English. This means that those of us who pronounce tour this way don't have to change our pronunciation by much to pronounce "Tour de France". The Canadian Oxford Dictionary makes no mention of this pronunciation. --D P J 04:18, 23 June 2006 (UTC)
- It's pronounced like that in North Dakota as well.—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Greetingz (talk • contribs).
[edit] RP?
Why is this article constantly comparing Canadian English with RP? Surely General American is at least as useful as a point of reference, since Canadian English differs from GA so much less than from RP. QuartierLatin1968 21:43, 29 June 2006 (UTC)
