- Having had the opportunity to work in an American outsourced call center that was in BC, I can tell you first hand that US Customers from the pacific northwest and California rarely go "Where are you at?" or "What country are you in?", however customers from the North East often pick up on the accent difference but can't place it. Southerners however almost always believe that the call center is somewhere near the great lakes. From experience, the trip word is always "About", because people in BC don't have the "Aboot" accent, they also don't have the same "oo" = "u" accent that West coast Americans have. Here's an example "Roof" = is pronounced roo-f, where as Americans pronounce it R-uff. See the "mixture of aboriginal words and place names" for the reason.
I was born and raised in Ottawa,ontario, my parents were immigrants, and taught me to speak the english they learned....American english..
So I speak with an american accent, I don't speak with the typical canadian accent, everyone I know that came from an 'immigrant' family speaks american.... the 'whites' speak canadian.
I came to Alberta a couple of months ago.... and boy do these people speak canadian, they also call sneakers runners, instead of throwing something you 'chucked it' and also instead of saying bud like to skip a line or push someone (like that) they say 'budge' haha.
Just stating, general canadian IS General American, If you speak General American you can chill in canada hahaha,
What is a forum signature?
I was wondering if adding words that are specific to certain provinces or territories would be related to this. Like in the BC bit where it mentions potlatch and the like. I know of other words that are regional and I wanted to know if adding them would be acceptable.
Hide / Show Replies
To clarify I'm a Saskatchewanian and I was wondering if I could put words like bunnyhug or slough or gibbled or the grid etc.
As a Winnipeger who is no linguist but is 100% certain he sounds nothing like an Albertan, I am in favour of separating out Sask and MB and allowing their own distinctions and influences (Ukrainian and Low German notably).
I'm from Edmonton, Alberta, and visited an online friend in San Diego a month ago, and aside from certain words ("pop" instead of "soda", the eternal debate), I was told that I talked like I was from the same place they were. Though some people have asked me if I was from the States before after hearing me talk, so maybe that's just me who can "blend in".