A rose by any other name...

[fajrdrako]

I've been browsing lists of Canadianisms. I'm always amazed when I do that - a mixture of "you mean other people don't say that?" and "but that's just another case where we use the British term, not the American". So it's all in the perspective. I'd like to see a list of Canadianisms complied by someone from the UK - I bet it would be entirely unlike he ones I'm seeing here, which are generally written by or for Americans. Mind you, the British just tend to think we talk like Americans. Which we don't, of course. Not at all. Absolutely not!

This is what got me started: An American's Guide to Canada: Canadianisms.

Don't Americans have Kraft Dinner? What do they call it?

A lot of these lists say "pop" is our term for "soft drinks", and I've heard that word used, though I'd never use it. I thought that was an Americanism. What do Americans say? Soda pop?

I knew Americans didn't have Smarties, but don't they have Coffee Crisp? That's downright sad. I think I should send care packages to all my American friends now. (Or maybe just go and get a Coffee Crisp for myself...)

I don't use "coriander" and "cilantro" to mean the same thing - I tend to use "coriander" when it's dried in a bottle, "cilantro" when it's fresh. Maybe it's because we get our bottles of coriander from the States?

The Wikipedia article has interesting notes about the "low-back merger and the Canadian Shift" in words like "cot" and "caught". I never figured that one out - can't even hear it. I assume it's the same as "dawn" and "don", which I have been known to get American friends to repeat over and over so I can hear the difference. It baffles me. Similarly, I can't hear a difference between my pronunciation of "out and about" and the average American's way of saying it.

They also say, "Some older speakers still maintain a distinction between whale and wail, and do and dew." Well, of course - doesn't everyone? I'll have to listen carefully to these words now. They sound quite different to me.

I already knew "eavestrough" was a Canadianism, but I didn't know about cooking onions, keener, knapsack, laneway, deke, fire hall, whitener - common words - and do other people really not say Jesus Murphy? This site makes "eavestrough" two words, which is wrong.

An American Guide to Canadianisms has corner store: a phrase so common I've probably used it elsewhere about thinking about it. Don't Americans get in a lineup when they are waiting for something? (I struggled with that one when I lived in England.)

I don't personally say "housecoat", I say "dressing gown". When I hear "housecoat" I tend to think of a loose garment, perhaps with buttons or a zipper, that you'd wear casually around the house - not just when you're on the way to the shower. A "dressing gown" has no fastener but a belt to tie it closed. To illustrate:

• Housecoat
  
• Dressing gown - and the one in this picture just happens to be identical to the one I wear every day.
  

A Nanaimo Bar doesn't, to my mind, resemble a Brownie - it doesn't involve cake. I like Nanaimo Bars, and strongly dislike Brownies. Butter tarts are the best dessert ever. (Well... maybe not quite as good as crème brulée, but close.) Do Americans not have sugar pie? It's a sort of Quebec specialty, but I thought they had it in the North-East US. "Chip truck" strikes me as an odd inclusions - surely they have these in the States, too? And in England? What do they call them? "Fries truck"? "Chip van"? I think, but can't prove it, that the British are more likely to differentiate between trucks and vans (or, rather, vans and lorries) than we are.

This site of Funny Canadian Sayings made me laugh. Canadian humour. I don't believe they're all really sayings, though - just expressive jokes. Mind you, I've heard people say a number of them.

Most of these lists omit a few things I'd put on my list:

• First Nations
  
• "grade one" instead of "first grade". I messed this one up in the first fanfic story I ever put online - an X-Files story - and that mistake was the first thing the Americans commented on. Usually the only thing.
  
• Multiculturalism, which is used somewhat differently here than in the rest of the world.
  
• Bank machine - an ATM. Once in Ireland I wanted to ask where to find one, and couldn't think of an alternate word. The poor girl I was trying to ask had no idea what I was talking about.
  
• Wicket. I'm not sure what the US word for this is. It's where you get service at a window, as in a bank or box office.
  
• Enumeration lists
  
• Electric kettles
  
• MPP
  
• Humidex and wind chill factor
  
• "Thank you kindly." I'm not even sure it's a Canadianism, though it's certainly a phrase I hear. I had the impression it was an Irish phrase brought over to Canada (or the US?) by early immigrants.
  
• HST - simply meaning that the websites listing GST only haven't been updated.
  

Can you think of other things you'd include? Someone told me recently that glasses like the ones I just bought - which I called "multifocal glasses" - were called "progressives" in the States, but I couldn't find documentation on that. Looking up multifocals got me a bunch of Australian sites - an example of the Australians and Canadians thinking alike?

Comments

[giandujakiss]

Don't Americans get in a lineup when they are waiting for something? (I struggled with that one when I lived in England.)

Heh, no. A lineup, used as a noun, here means only a police lineup - like, when the cops put a bunch of people in a line and ask a witness to identify the suspect. You might use the phrase as a verb, two words - "Everybody, line up."

Generally, here you either you wait "on line" or "in line" (or, you "get on line" or "get in line") - except I'm pretty sure that "on line" is a New York or East Coast thing; it's not common in most of the country.

[fajrdrako]

I love comparing linguistic differences! Here, being "in line" is the same as being "in a lineup", and being "on line" means being connected to the Net. Mostly I'd say "I was in a lineup at the bank" or "I was in a very long lineup at the grocery store".

And I'm not sure of this at all, but I think Canadians are more likely to say "grocery store" when people in other countries would say "supermarket".

[giandujakiss]

"On line" here also means being connected to the 'net - as I said, use of it for waiting on/in a line is a small regional difference :-). But yeah, in America, saying "I was in a lineup at the bank" would actually be kinda funny.

I've heard grocery store here used plenty of times so that actually might not be a difference with Canada.

oh, Kraft Dinner - here we'd just say Macaroni and Cheese, or Mac and Cheese, which would refer to the food but not the brand. You'd specify Kraft Macaroni and Cheese, if the brand made a difference, but since it's by far the most popular brand, even without saying Kraft most people would probably assume that's what you meant, unless the context suggested otherwise (like, Mac and Cheese at a restaurant wouldn't be out of a box and wouldn't be Kraft).

[fajrdrako]

Yes, I'd say "macaroni and cheese" if I was actually making the dish from scratch, but Kraft Dinner is what you eat when you make it out of a box, and I don't think anyone here would call it macaroni and cheese. They'd call it Kraft Dinner even if it was made by some other company, e.e., "President's Choice Kraft Dinner" - which is actually kind of funny, and not what it says on the box.

Now I'm getting hungry.

[giandujakiss]

Well, in some parts of the country, a "coke" means a soda - of any kind, whether it's Coca Cola, or Pepsi, or Sprite :-). So we do that too, occasionally.

[fajrdrako]

Sort of like we use "kleenex" to mean any kind of tissue.

[jae]

I am guessing that you live in Ontario, given that you think 'MPP' and 'HST' are 'Canadianisms' rather than mere regionalisms. Yes? ;)

Gentle teasing over, time to comment on the rest. I've been a Canadian for an awfully long time, but I used to be American, and I'm a sociolinguist, so I pay a lot of attention to these things anyway. But take my knowledge about the U.S. with a rather outdated grain of salt, 'kay?

- Americans get in a "line", Brits get an a "queue", and Canadians get in a "lineup". This one actually does seem to apply pretty universally, too.

- Canadians always seem to think 'pop' is a Canada-specific term, but huge swathes of the U.S. actually use it too. In fact, the 'pop'/'soda' wars came up in nearly every linguistics class I took at my (American) university when I was an undergraduate.

- I have never used any word other than 'eavestrough', even when I lived in the U.S., which suggests that (like 'pop'), this one is regional rather than national.

- The cot/caught merger actually also exists in parts of the U.S., too, so it's not an exclusive Canadianism either. And interestingly, the merged vowel is different in different parts of the U.S. Detroit, for example, has two distinct sounds, while Boston has only one of them, and most of the West has only the other one of them.

- The Canadian pronunciation of words like 'out' and 'about' (which is called Canadian raising) is different in different parts of Canada and among different age groups, though I won't go into the boring phonological details. There is also some evidence (see the paper about Canadian raising in the U.S. in the 'bibliography' on that wikipedia page) that American and Canadian English might be converging in the border areas.

Probably more than you bargained for, there. :)

-J

[jae]

Annnnd I just realized that in one measly little comment I just posted in public all of the information necessary to figure out who 'jae' is in real life. D'oh! Ah well. I'd just ask that you not connect my journal to my real-life identity (I have no desire for my students to stumble upon their professor's fanfiction, for example), if you don't mind. Thanks. :)

-J

[fajrdrako]

Fear not.

[fajrdrako]

Yes, I am in Ontario. And I thought of specifying that when I mentioned the HST - but it seemed more fun not to. Don't other provinces have MPPs? Am I showing my ignorance there?

I never thought "pop" was a Canadian term, because I hear more Americans use it than Canadians, or so it has seemed. But it keeps cropping up on these lists. Proving that language does not respect borders, necessarily.

I find this fascinating - I could discuss it for hours. Thanks for commenting.

[jae]

I may be wrong in this, but I think the "Centre of the Universe"^TM is the only province to refer to local representatives in the provincial legislature as 'MPPs'. Even if it's not limited to Ontario, though, there are plenty of other terms in other provinces. The one I'm most familiar with is 'MLAs' (B.C., Alberta, possibly others), but there's also 'MHAs' (Nova Scotia, Newfoundland), and 'MNAs' (Quebec). Not sure if that's all. They're definitely not all called MPPs, though!

-J

[fajrdrako]

I never knew that. Learn something every day!

I am told on good authority that "Centre of the Universe" doesn't apply to Ontario in general, but, properly, only to Toronto. The further you get from Yonge and Bloor, the more one falls off the Centre of the Universe map.

[redbird]

We use wind chill factor, but have a thing called THI (for temperature-humidity index) instead of humidex. I'm not sure how much difference there is. (At least one network was using "real feel" for heat+humidity, but I think they trademarked that.)

We don't have electric kettles, alas. Or, rather, they exist, but they are hard to find, and few Americans own them.

[fajrdrako]

I've never understood why Americans don't use electric kettles - it's just of those things.

I wonder if it's because Americans don't drink tea much, so don't use their kettles as often as I would.

[redbird]

That's part of it, certainly. I don't have one because my apartment's electric wiring is woefully out of date: I have a shortage of outlets in my kitchen, and a four-burner gas stove. A whistling teakettle over a gas burner gets me boiling water pretty quickly, and the whistle means I don't boil the kettle dry. The electric kettles I've seen shut themselves off, so they don't boil themselves dry and start a fire, but I can miss the kettle boiling, go in, and have to turn it back on.

(Don't get me started on what many Americans will try to pass off as tea. Then again, I've had some pretty sad "tea" in Canada as well. Using boiling water is not a difficult concept.)

Oh, in case you were wondering, onyxlynx sent me.

[fajrdrako]

My kitchen's wiring isn't the greatest, either. I usually keep my microwave unplugged so the outlet is always free for the kettle.

As for tea... The worst cup of tea I ever had was in Ottawa, at a Greek restaurant. I think they thought tea should be made with lukewarm water. And yes, I've had appalling tea in the US and even occasionally in the UK - I think the thing is, when travelling, I'm more likely to be drinking tea in restaurants (or airports) where it tends to be substandard compared to tea made in people's homes, regardless of what country it is.

Then there's the trick with the dripping teapots, which seems to be universal in restaurants. What's with that?

And thanks to onyxlynx for sending people over.

I use an electric kettle

[dakiwiboid]

I caught the infection from my boss, who had one at the office for instant coffee, to which she was addicted. I then addicted my sister, who has a much fancier one than I do. My sister and I are both tea drinkers, by the way.

However, I refine my teamaking, at least in the cooler months, by adding the Chinese refinement of putting any hot water not needed for my cup or small teapot into a little thermo so that it's still hot for my second cup. It's an energy and time-saver.

[jae]

I didn't discover electric kettles until I moved to Canada, and I thought they were this awesome Canadian thing that simply didn't exist in the U.S. When my parents fell in love with mine, though, they decided to buy one and didn't have any trouble finding one. Apparently they are available, but no one buys them? Definitely weird.

-J

[fajrdrako]

...It just goes to show what a strange world we live in!

[trouble]

Surfed in on a link.

We use MLA not MPP in Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia. HST is one I only heard in Nova Scotia and it confused me. Alberta still doesn't have a sales tax so it's only GST there.

I never heard Humidex before I moved to Toronto. Now I am well aware of its meaning. Urgle.

[fajrdrako]

Surfed in on a link.

And welcome to you!

We use MLA not MPP in Alberta, British Columbia, and Nova Scotia.

Member of Legislative Assembly? I didn't know that.

Alberta still doesn't have a sales tax so it's only GST there.

HST is annoying. I disapprove of sales tax.

I never heard Humidex before I moved to Toronto. Now I am well aware of its meaning.

Yeah.. sadly, we use it because we need it!

[firecat]

Here via onyxlynx

My parents grew up in Illinois, I grew up mostly near Detroit, I spent 10 years on the East Coast of the US, six months in Montreal, and over 20 years in California.

We have the Kraft brand of boxed foods, but I say "mac and cheese."

I used "pop" in Detroit; when I moved to the East Coast I switched to "soda" and have used it ever since.

"Coriander" is the spice in the bottle, "cilantro" is the leafy stuff.

I pronounce "cot" and "caught"/"dawn" and "don" differently.

I pronounce "whale" and "wail" differently (the vowel is the same, but I pronounce the "h" in "whale"). But I pronounce "do" and "dew" the same, although I can hear it when people pronounce them differently.

I've never even heard the term "eavestrough" before, although I grew up in the same area that jae did. I use "eaves" or more commonly "gutter."

I've never heard of cooking onions, keener, laneway, deke, fire hall, or Jesus Murphy. I've heard of knapsack and whitener.

I've used "corner store" for a long time.

I "get in line" when I am waiting for something.

"Housecoat" and "dressing gown" have different meanings. "Dressing gown," "robe," and "bathrobe" might mean the same thing but have slightly different connotations ("dressing gown" feels like it should be used for something formal or fancy, and a white terrycloth thing with a belt is a "bathrobe").

I've heard of Nanimo Bars but haven't had one. I have had butter tarts. I don't know what sugar pie is. I've never seen a chip truck but I've seen a hot dog stand, a taco truck, and a street food vendor.

I use "banking machine" and "ATM" interchangeably.

I use "window" or "service window" instead of "wicket."

I'm surprised so many USians don't know about electric kettles.

"Thank you kindly" sounds like something a woman from an earlier generation.

I think that my trifocal glasses, with three areas of focus separated by lines, might be multifocals, but progressives are glasses where the areas of focus shade into each other.