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The Impact of Canadian Speech on British Ears
By Henry Alexander of Queen’s University, Kingston, Ont.
Walking down one of the main streets of Victoria, B.C., the other day, I
was horrified to see an establishment labelled Pantorium. How are the mighty
fallen! The most British spot in the British Commonwealth lapsing into
the most startling methods of American word coinage. And in another street
there were a bootery and a toggery. In Vancouver there is a restaurant that
announces on its menu an oysterburger.
Although these are extreme examples and belong perhaps to trade nomen-
clature rather than everyday speech, there can be no doubt that our Canadian
vocabulary is shot through and through with Americanisms and that a British
hearer would often hastily put a Canadian down as an American speaker,
which of course in a sense he is. I myself, though I have not lost my English
accent, am frequently taken for an American in London, because of the odd
American phrase that slips out.
But with regard to pronunciation the situation is different. There are so
many types of Canadian pronunciation, as one passes from coast to coast
and from one social level to another, that all generalizations are dangerous.
One can, however, safely say that there are many Canadians, especially on
the West Coast, whose pronunciation is completely un-American. They
possess British accents of which they are proud, accents imported from
Great Britain, inherited from British ancestors, or acquired by blood, sweat
and tears. Certainly a bus-ride in Victoria or Vancouver makes one feel one
is back in the Old Country again; the speech sounds so familiar. Any Britisher
would feel completely at home. But as one travels east to Central Canada
and the Maritimes, the British coloring disappears in large measure, and one
Painting is the most advanced of all
Canadian arts. Here Mr. A. Y. Jackson,
who is regarded the ‘‘dean of Canadian
painters’’, instructs a student at a summer
school in Banff, Alberta.
La peinture occupe le premier plan dans
les arts au Canada. M. A. Y. Jackson,
considéré comme le doyen des peintres
canadiens, est ici en train de donner un
cours à Banff, Alberta, où se tiennent des
cours d’été.
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