DO YOU SPEND YOUR SUMMERS AT A CABIN, COTTAGE OR CAMP? DO YOU PLAY KICKBALL OR SOCCER-BASEBALL? IN A WEEKLONG SERIES, SPEAKING OF CANADA, WE’LL EXPLORE THE DIFFERENCES IN OUR COMMON LANGUAGE.
Across this great nation of ours, there are approximately 30 million speakers of Canadian English. Typically, when we think of Canadian English we identify it first by what it is not: American English (and sometimes British English). However, right here at home, within our 9,984,670 square km of space, there is a massive assortment of words we use to describe the same thing, and even when we agree on a single term, the pronunciations we employ are sometimes completely different. Do you spend your summers at a cabin, cottage or camp? As a kid in gym class, did you play soccer-baseball or kickball? When it came time to pick up school supplies, did your parents buy you a new set of pencil crayons, coloured pencils or leads? Do you pronounce “decal” as DEEKAL or DEK-EL? It turns out the answers to these questions have an awful lot to do with what part of the country you grew up in. So much so that it prompts another question: What do the words you use say about where you’re from?
This week, as we approach Canada Day, we’ll try to answer that question by talking to linguists, sharing stories of our own discovery of differences in the language Canadians use and exploring the regional dialects that define us as a country.
Today, we look forward to the future of our regionalisms. Are our distinct dialects under threat from social media trends and increased globalization? Or will our language-based identities thrive under the pressure of outside forces?
‘Yo fam, I’m going to Timmie’s for a doubledouble before stopping by the Lickbo to pick up a mickey and two-fer for tonight’s party. Should I scoop you on the way?”
If the above lines make any sense to you, chances are you’re from somewhere in the Greater Toronto Area. The two sentences are filled with regional slang that might be hard to understand for anyone outside the GTA. Some terms — like “Timmie’s,” “mickey” and “two-fer” — may resonate with Canadians beyond Toronto, but still baffle Americans. And while our neighbours to the south certainly enjoy mocking us from time to time for saying “eh” and pronouncing “about” as “aboot,” our national vernacular is a lot more varied than mere stereotypes would indicate.
As anyone who has traveled across Canada is aware, our country boasts several distinct regional dialects. Newfoundland, as the best example of this, is home to the most linguistically diverse English on the planet, meaning they have more ways of saying or pronouncing the same words than anywhere else. However, given our country’s massive geographical size, our language landscape is almost uniform in comparison to smaller-sized countries like England, Portugal and Italy.
“From the Ontario-Quebec border out to Vancouver Island, it’s a pretty homogenous dialect,” says Derek Denis, assistant professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto. “United Empire Loyalists moved into southern Ontario from America and, in subsequent generations, moved westward. While there was immigration from other parts of the world, the migration from Ontario to the west was the most substantial and so we see the same dialect also move across Canada.”
Our regional dialects may not be as vast as elsewhere, but we are still protective of the identity that local terms and slang exhibit. For some, this has led to a fear that the challenges facing local media outlets and the ubiquity of mass media broadcasting from large urban centres or south of the border may strip Canada of our distinct dialectics and the corresponding identity we get from them.
However, according to Denis, such worries are completely unfounded. “The hype of linking media and the internet to language change has never panned out in the way we expected. People thought there would be this widespread standardization of languages, but that didn’t happen. Even though Peter Mansbridge was the host of The National and people in Newfoundland listened to him every day, Newfoundland English still sounds like Newfoundland English.”
This unexpected resilience helped linguists confirm that language change requires face-to-face interaction. Standardized speech over the airwaves or on YouTube has little power to affect how we speak. The same is true for social media. While Facebook, Twitter and Instagram may mess with our self-esteem, political leanings and privacy, the one thing it isn’t disrupting is language. Not only do social networks reflect existing regional dialects and slang, they’re actually evolving them in ways that reinforce and increase their distinctiveness. This occurs because there’s less social regulation on social media than in other types of more formal writing, allowing users to personalize and play with language.
While previous generations of Canadians often made efforts to downplay their regional dialects — especially those from Atlantic Canada who moved westward — younger cohorts are embracing them. As the world becomes more globalized, we react by wanting to preserve our local identities through language. “Canadians are waving the flag, linguistically,” says Gerard van Herk, associate professor of linguistics at the Memorial University of Newfoundland. While Canadians used to be embarrassed to be caught saying “eh” abroad, they now add it to phrases to purposefully distinguish themselves from Americans. It’s the linguistic equivalent of travelling the world with a Canadian flag on your backpack.
“We’re seeing changes in the vowel systems in North America where Canadians and Americans in the Great Lakes area sound much more different than they did 100 years ago, and it’s the Canadians differentiating themselves,” explains van Herk. “The closer to the American border you get in the Golden Horseshoe, the stronger the Canadian features are. People are really working hard to prove they’re not American.”
While Canadians might fend off globalization by reinforcing their regional dialects, the most significant evolution in Canadian English has been found in major cities with large immigrant populations. “In Toronto, in particularly multilingual neighbourhoods, we see what’s been labelled on the internet as ‘Toronto slang,’ which are words that have been borrowed from other languages,” says Denis. Prominent influences include Arabic, Jamaican patois and Somali. For example, “wagwan,” Jamaican slang for asking “what’s going on?” is now considered an essential Toronto-ism.
This phenomenon is embodied in Drake, whose rap lyrics often draw from Toronto’s linguistic fabric, such as when he says “I know some Somalis that say we got it, wallahi” in the song “Draft Day.” Wallahi is actually a Somali corruption of the Arabic word “wallah,” essentially meaning “I swear to God.” Drake’s rise in popular culture alongside other Toronto rappers and hip-hop artists like K’naan and The Weeknd with similar linguistic diversity has rapidly expanded the use of Toronto slang from small neighbourhoods to the city at large and beyond.
The use of immigrants’ native languages by non-immigrants hasn’t come without controversy. There have been accusations of cultural appropriation by some, and the issue was thrown into the spotlight just a few years ago when former Toronto mayor Rob Ford was captured on video drunkenly ranting in Jamaican Creole expletives. While many viewers may have assumed Ford was doing a crude imitation, Hubert Devonish, a linguistics professor at the University of the West Indies’ Jamaican Language Unit, told the National Post at the time that Ford’s patois was actually fairly authentic – a reflection of his Etobicoke upbringing.
There’s even an iPhone app to help you communicate in Toronto slang. Sticker Ting, created by Toronto illustrator Tabban Soleimani, offers humorous stickers based on terms and phrases frequently borrowed from the city’s West Indian community. Its popularity (even Drake is reportedly a fan) again reflects people’s eagerness to signal unique local identities online rather than conform to a universal dialect.
If anything, rather than dying out, Canadian English dialects are evolving and becoming stronger than ever. It’s reassuring to note that when the words we use do shift, they do so in a way that reflects a sense of patriotism and expresses distinctly Canadian values, like cultural diversity. Finally, after decades of apologizing and shying away from the spotlight, it’s not only cool to be Canadian, but it’s cool to be from all the different parts of Canada. And we’re not afraid to say so — literally via our speech patterns. It’s aboot time, eh?