You might be from Nova Scotia if ...

Chesterfield, silverware, deckle, car-mel and bristol board.

If you use those words on the daily, you might just be from Nova Scotia.

A viral article posted by the10and3. com — which describes the site’s mission as telling unusual stories about Canada through visualizations – highlights many of the linguistic anomalies across Canada when it comes to common words and phrases.

The articles’ authors, Zack Gallinger and Arik Motskin, who are also the site’s founders, conducted an online survey of English- speaking Canadians, asking 35 questions about the words they use to refer to various things, for instance, whether they refer to the evening meal supper or dinner.

They collected more than 9,500 responses from every province and territory “as well as a significant number from interesting linguistic subregions like Cape Breton, Labrador and the Avalon Peninsula in Newfoundland.”

The results were fascinating, showing a surprising amount of linguistic diversity within the country as well as many common “Canadianisms.”

For example, if you are from the Western provinces, Nova Scotia or P.E.I. and pronounce decal as deckle you might get some confused looks from anyone who lives outside those regions.

Or, if you’re from mainland Nova Scotia or Cape Breton, you likely ask for silverware instead of utensils (preferred in Quebec, northern Ontario and New Brunswick) or cutlery (preferred everywhere else). And if you’ve never heard the term crooked to refer to someone who is being a grump, you are probably not from Newfoundland and Labrador.

The article quotes Charles Boberg, an associate professor of linguistics at McGill University, who suggested that much of our country’s language regionalism is due to isolation.

“(With) a relatively small population spread out over 5,000 km ... local cultures, which include unique vocabulary, have a chance to develop in each region, even over the relatively short time span of one or two centuries, without diffusing to other regions,” he said in the piece.

This theory holds especially true for islands like Cape Breton and Newfoundland, which are more isolated and also more linguistically diverse.

Here are some other interesting tidbits gleaned from the survey: In all regions of Canada, caramel is pronounced with three syllables as carea-mel, except for Cape Breton and the island of Newfoundland, where it is predominantly pronounced car-mel.

Remember those large colourful pieces of cardboard you used to present projects in elementary school? If you are from Ontario or the Atlantic provinces, you probably called it bristol board. The rest of Canada calls it poster board.

All provinces in Canada call a hooded sweatshirt a hoodie, except Saskatchewan, which calls it a bunnyhug.

Though the term for a small house in the country you visit in the summer is varied across Canada, most use either cabin or cottage. Cape Breton is the only part of the country that refers to it as a bungalow.

Although the word chesterfield is a stereotypical Canadianism, the words sofa and couch have almost completely taken over the vocabulary among modern Canucks – except in Newfoundland and Cape Breton where it is still used among a portion of the population.

Pencil crayon is the preferred term for the art supply in most of Canada, except for Quebec and Nova Scotia, where they are called coloured pencils, and Newfoundland, where they are called leads.

Nunavut and Newfoundland and Labrador are the only two regions that reject the term toque for the word hat.

The Atlantic provinces prefer the U.S. term “sneakers,” to refer to athletic footwear, the rest of Canada uses running shoes or runners.

The full article with illustrated maps is available at the10and3.com.