Quote:
Originally Posted by zoobinshid  Hello everybody,
Considering the vocabulary is there any difference between American English and Canadian English?What about the pronunciation?
Thanks in advance,  |
Ahhhh....there certainly is a difference. We are of course heavily influenced by our neighbour to the south but in reality Canadian English is a mixture of British English and American English.
We retain a lot of British spelling for example: colour not color, favour not favor.
We say "zed" not "zee"
There are many words that are pronounced differently
We say aBOUt not abOUT for about
We say fuTILE not FUtile
juvenILE not juVENile
Many words are used differently.
In the USA a young person might say he is going to college and end up going to Yale or Harvard. In Canada, we would say that we are going to university...a college is a smaller institution or technical school which can only grant diplomas...not degrees.
In politics the use of the word "liberal" in the USA is a person who is objectionably socialist. It is almost an insult to call someone this. In Canada we have a political party named "Liberals", who, while sometimes left of center on some policies, are certainly pro-big business
Of course there is a lot of Canadian slang that is different from American
I'll have my coffee, double double (two cream/two sugar)
I have two loonies in my pocket. Is that enough money to buy that? (a loonie is a $1 coin, a twoonie is a $2 coin)
I'll bring a 2-4 to the party (a case of 24 beer)
Our language is also influenced by French more than the USA.
We eat
poutine sometimes for fast food (Poutine is french fries smoothered with cheese and gravy.)
A rather good discussion of Canadian English is given on Wikipedia
Canadian English - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia