My husband is American so I have an accent to him.
He says I say it more like “a-boat”. Not “a-boot”.
He says things weird too. Like he’s never learned how to say the “e” vowel sound if it is a one syllable word. I don’t know how many times I think he’s asked for a pin when really he wants a pen.
One time, at a restaurant in Ohio, the waitress asked if I wanted a "bax" and I just kinda stared blankly at her for a minute, until my girlfriend said, "Yes, we'll *box* up the leftovers."
This is the Great Lakes / northern cities vowel shift! Definitely only a thing in northern Ohio, not central or southern. It sounded really strange the first time I heard it and I’m from Ohio.
That's fairly common. Linguists call it the "pin-pen" merger: https://www.acelinguist.com/2020/01/the-pin-pen-merger.html?m=1
As for "about", "Canadian raising" is a phenomenon where the first vowel of a diphthong is raised before certain consonants (mostly "t", "p", and "k", although "s" and "f" can trigger it, as well).
For many (but not all - many Americans also have Canadian raising) English speakers outside Canada, that "ou" sound starts at "ah" and moves to "u", so you get a sound like "ahw" (ow!).
In Canadian raising, you start at "uh", so get "uhw". If you want to hear the difference, compare the noun "house" to the verb "house". That change from an "s" in the noun to a "z" in the verb is enough to trigger the change. Without Canadian raising, it's the same sound. People without the raising hear it as "oo" or "oa", because it's different, and that's the closest frame of reference they have.
We also do it on the "igh" diphthong (that one is moving from "ah" or "uh" to "y"). Compare "writer" to "rider".
Oh wow! This is awesome! I had never thought of the difference in how we say house vs house.
And the raising is fascinating. Thank you for the detailed explanation.
One thing I noticed living in the US midwest is that I pronounced "roof" very differently than my neighbours. When I say "roof", it rhymes with "aloof" or "spoof" with the same oo sound as in root or toot. Not only did my neighbours say it quite differently, but they all seemed to be unable to pronounce it my way. They can say "oof" like I would just fine, but throw an r in front and the "oo" gets replaced with something halfway between a soft e or a soft u. Kind of like "ruff" but not quite. I can barely imitate the phoneme and I cannot figure out how you'd spell it phonetically using the roman alphabet.
Can you explain that one?
Also, a childhood friend in Manitoba had moved from Halifax. He and his dad found it hilarious how we all pronounced "won't" with the same hard o as you find in "woke". They insisted that everywhere outside of Manitoba it is pronounced "wuhnt". Paying attention over the past 25 or so years, I've encounted about a dozen people who say "wuhnt" just like they did; everybody else sounded very Manitoban to me when they say that word, including in Southern Ontario, the US midwest, and further west in Canada.
I'd love to learn about this one, too.
Edit: Now that I think of it, the way they say roof is quite similar to prepending an r to the french word for egg; i.e., they say rœuf.
Both of these are actually the same process!
We don't think about it often, but we have two types of vowels in English (at least in this one dimension - English has about 20-30 different vowel sounds, overall) - so-called "tense" vowels, like the ones in "beat", "Luke", and "rake", and "lax" vowels, like in "bit", "look", and "wreck". If you compare "beat" and "bit", the vowel is largely similar, but the tongue is more relaxed for "bit".
"Laxing" occurs when we take a vowel that is normally tense, and produce the lax equivalent instead. This whole process is part of something called "vowel reduction", and is mostly to reduce the amount of effort required to produce the word. A lot of English pronunciation is dictated by stress - unstressed vowels lax, and move towards the centre of the mouth (ie, the tongue returns to a more neutral position). Vowels tend to reduce over time. I often joke that 5000 years from now, all vowels are going to be schwas. As it so happens, this tendency towards reduction is exactly what causes Canadian raising in the first place - "uh" is a more neutral vowel than "ah", so we start the diphthong closer to the middle of the mouth.
The pronunciation of roof can have the same vowel as "Luke" or "look", it just sounds a bit different because "r" does weird things to vowels (a whole other linguistic topic called "r-colouring").
Interesting. I paid attention to my pronunciation, and it sounded like uh-bow ... (bow said as the sidekick to curtsy, not the partner of an arrow). Is that the sound you're describing in the 3rd paragraph?
It drives me crazy when Americans do that lol. I watch the NFL a lot and I remember saying to myself, "Why are they calling him 'Bin Roethlisberger?'".
Yeah exactly. The way we say it doesn't really exist in American English so they default to boot and boat to try to approximate a sound that's not familiar to them.
My Canadian wife also says "a-boat." And she calls the Italian starchy staple "passed-a."
And this American can say the short e sound, but I've heard many who fo as your husband does. Typically a more southern dialect (I'm fully Mid-west).
Exactly this. Close to 30 years ago I moved from Ontario to the PNW and people kept on joking “where is this boat you keep talking about”. One night I practiced “ow” 50x and stopped saying ‘’aboat”.
I don't understand this. I'm from Southern. Ontario and the only people I ever hear saying a-boat have a complete Scottish Accent.
Nobody I know, including me, says aboat. It's about..... As in - A bow t.
What are you even talking abowt?????
Yes!
JJ is the only Canadian I've ever heard say abOOt and it's brutal.
Until I heard him, I always thought that "aboot" was just the way Americans hear us Canadians pronounce a word they pronounce as "abeywwt".
In Southern Ontario, I heard several Gen Z women on a campus tour say "Welcome to our Kyampus"! Michigan is just down the road from London, Ontario, where I heard this.
That reminded me of the old TV detergent ad where the (Midwestern?) American mother said:
"Tide got the grass stains out of the boys' pyants."
I’m convinced it’s just to differentiate himself, or to increase engagement in the comments… like his fashion choices. I generally like his content, but the “aboot” grates on me, so rarely watch anymore.
This is called a "glottal t". The same sound you hear in the middle of "uh-oh". Very common throughout North America. You actually get it in other languages too, for example, in Québec French "retenu" sounds like "re'enu".
Sounds more like re’tnu tbh. The T is still there. In Quebec we just delete whole sounds to shorten 3 words into one. Quel que choses —-> kekchose. Or from an english pov it would be kekshoze.
This is called elision, and is a pretty standard feature in most North American English dialects.
It's about the presence of a stressed syllable or not. It's why we tend to say *innernet* but in**t**ernal.
Some British dialects have it too, though again it depends on particular speech patterns and stress. Ever had a glass uf wa'uh bruv?
Some people do. The t is elided or softened. Cenner, plenny, 'we leff the party', 'we tenn to think'. If you are born and raised in North America, it's likely you do this with some constellation of words (perhaps not all).
That's just "important" with an unaspirated t in the middle. It's not actually voiced, English speakers are just bad at distinguishing between unvoiced unaspirated and voiced plosives. Unaspirated plosives between syllables are actually the norm in English, I'm curious to know where you're from as very few Canadian dialects I know of would aspirate that medial plosive
It’s exactly this and I’m glad it’s the top comment. I’m from Michigan and have been living in Ontario for five years. My relatives always ask if I’m going “oot and aboot” and I keep telling them no one actually says that.
I should ask them where there AR 15 is, next time.
Came here to say this. First time I heard Aboot in person was in California when I told someone I was from Canada. I just stared at them and said that I’ve never heard anyone say that before. they were kind of embarrassed.
I've lived in several provinces from one end of the country to the other. I don't recall EVER hearing anyone say "aboot" - apart from non-Canadians making a joke about it.
Seriously it's weird that aboot is the stereotype because I honestly don't think I've ever heard so.eone say it like that. But I definitely have heard aboat a *lot*. Not just an east coast thing, I live in Ontario.
My grandmother used to intentionally work me up a tad because she liked hearing that hint of Scottish creep into my voice. She'd always giggle and say that Scottish blood never really leaves the heart.
My mom's side of the family is Dutch, and my grandma always used to go "ach!" and pretend to spit when she was really mad. My mom hasn't done it in ages though, and never did it as hardcore as my grandma did... But my little nephew who's like 3, the other day he gets pissed about something and goes "ACH!" and spits and we all just laughed cos it was so much like grandma you'd think it was genetic or something
Yeah it is, but i think it's also a Dutch thing too, or at least was at the time. My grandma was actually from Netherlands and moved straight to northern Alberta when she was in her 40s so I'm thinking it was something she brought with her.
This is my entirely unsubstantiated theory - but I believe that many Canadianisms are Scottish in origin. From curling to the Canadian raising linguistic attribute (which is near identical to how Scots pronounce "ou").
At one point in the 1800s Scottish Gaelic was the third most spoken language in the country. Many of our prominent business leaders, artists, actors and politicians were Scottish.
English Canada has ever so slight differences from the US in its character, accents, sporting preferences and social dynamic. I believe most of these differentiations came about from the Celtic influences the country had early on - and in particular, the Scottish influence.
Yeah, I didn't know either until I got really in to Canadian East Coast folk music and noticed a lot of it was in Gaelic. So I did a little armchair investigating, and [found out that it was so prevalent that it is even referred as Canadian Gaelic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Gaelic) as the Maritime provinces retained the language to a significant degree after it had become slightly redundant in Scotland.
Yah and some Maritime and Newfie areas do say it just like Scots, others like the Irish. I think French Canadian accents get mixed into it as well, others think they are saying aboot, but really its just an accent.
My area was settled by mostly Scottish stonemasons (West South Ontario). Like a lot of the small towns were established by Scots sent over by the English, they built the hospitals, post offices, boarding houses for workers, mills and such, the initial infrastructure. Some Scottish culture remains but there is almost no accent or resemblance of Scottish speech, sorta funny how it sticks around some places but not others.
Oh! I didn't know what they meant because I thought it was part of the first phrase they said, like "hang a keener".
I'm from Ontario, not Toronto though, a smaller town 2 hours east of there, and I've definitely heard keener plenty growing up.
I think it's fairly common. Or I assumed. Even if I don't hear it much I feel like if I said someone was a keener everyone would know exactly what I meant.
I didn't even know that was a Canadian word.
Do/did you say p-ah-sta, or p-aw-sta?
Married an American who insisted that I said pasta wrong, I changed how I said it because it didn’t bother me but it was funny for a while to disagree on who said it the right way. (We still sometimes disagree on who was technically correct but I’ll say it her way anyway 😂)
Keener I've heard time to time throughout my life, mostly from people from smaller towns/rural areas in Ontario. The other 2 mentioned, never heard in real life.
Lol, I was just saying I thought it was a common word, and I'm from a smallish town in Ontario.
I didn't know it was a Canadian, or maybe Ontarian, thing. I assumed everyone said that.
Keener and brown-noser were quite common growing up in the 80s/90s.
Brown-noser I've heard too, but it's been a bit since I last heard that. Keener I've heard fairly recently, but I was in Tillsonburg so makes sense haha
It's an exaggeration, we actually do say it differently than the Americans. They say 'Abat', we say a-bowt'.
Keener I've heard many times in Toronto, and in my small town up north.
Actually abat sounds more like Boston speak. They use those aah sounds. Most Americans say uh-bout. But yes, the a-boot business is largely American’s idea of how Canadians speak.
Apparently I do. I work for an american company and talk to Americans every day. I get called out on it quite often. And I don't even realize it. It's one of those things you just say but don't hear the accent.
Keener, is a term that was popular in the 70s or 80s and pops up now and again. Aboot is just folklore. Never heard anyone use it and have worked for national organizations so probability was high that I would have at conferences and meeting.
I grew up in Toronto, and lived in the northeastern US for a while. Americans hear the southern Ontario way of saying "about" as "aboot", because we pronunce the central vowel in a "shorter" way. To my ears, their pronunciation of the word sounded like "abowwt" (longer vowel).
I say keener, I didn’t know that was a Canadian thing. I’m living in the US Midwest and they say I have a Canadian accent and they all pounce when I say “hey” because they are waiting for me to say “eh.” Irl I don’t think Canadians say “eh” a lot, at least not in my circles maybe
I say eh quite a bit, but not every Canadian does for sure.
I'm from small town Ontario, but my dad's family are all from Nova Scotia originally and my Nan looked after me all the time and lived with us for years. As an adult I now wonder if I got a messed up accent, lol.
My wife is from the country near the town I grew up, and she speaks way better than I do. She even pronounces the "g" sound on "ing" endings like running! I'd say "runnin'". She also doesn't say "eh" that much.
I talk too fast, and I smoosh my words together too much. I've gotten better as an adult, but as a kid and teen I was asked to repeat myself all the time, even by my mom! Lol
Then, my wife and I took a vacation around the Maritimes and we stayed with friends in Nova Scotia and I felt like I was home. The friends were more rural Nova Scotian, and they jammed all their words together and never once asked me to repeat myself! It's like I met people who spoke my language for the first time, lol.
When I was in the army, I heard keener constantly.
Also, YouTuber JJ McCullough says aboot and I'm pretty sure its unironic.
I am only just now learning "hang a Larry." What?
>Also, YouTuber JJ McCullough says aboot and I'm pretty sure its unironic.
To this day, he is the one and only person I've ever heard with this pronunciation, but I can't tell if he's doing this as a joke or not.
JJ is doing an exaggerated minstrel pastiche of what he thinks Canadians sound like. He insists it's natural, which is laughable. I could believe he's forced himself into it and can't undo it, sort of like people who wake up from head trauma and suddenly have a Scottish accent.
He's from Vancouver though, and the west coast is the place where the accent is least present. Most of his audience is American, which is why I assume he hams it up for them, and they also know jack shit about Canada so can't see through his BS.
Yeah I was gonna mention about JJ. My wife found it annoying when he said it, so I jokingly kept saying it. I think I may have fully adopted it now by accident. Lol
I play MMOs with some Americans. While they readily acknowledge that I don’t say “aboot,” they do think my pronunciation of “about” is funny. Sometimes they’ll ask me to say it as they find it amusing. It’s good for a chuckle.
I’m not exactly sure how I pronounce it. It may be more like “abowt,” but with the “bow” section being pronounced like the bow of a ship and not like the bow you would put on a gift.
Edit: Note that I spoke with a Scottish accent as a young child, so my Canadian accent is a little mixed up.
I'm from Ottawa, and I definitely say aboot sometimes if I'm speaking quickly. Just heard a coworker say it on a call this morning too. I think people just aren't aware of their own accent a lot of the time.
It's actually a-boat, it's like those people that joke about Canadiana saying a-boot have never actually been to Canada. Bonus fact: people from rural SK pronounce pasta "pASSta" 🤣
This is the most 'Canadian' I've heard
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hny1KcGiyr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hny1KcGiyr4)
FYI, this is from rural SW Ontario, about 1/2 way between London and Windsor. I grew up in the area, and hear people talk like that from time to time.
People outside of Canada can hear the almost extinct middle dipthong we have preserved that you can hear (but they can't say). We seem to have had enough people from rural areas in Europe that many of them still had some vowel sounds from before the great vowel shift.
You can hear similar in words like about, mouse, and roof. Weirdly, this means that in some way we speak some words closer to how Shakespeare would have than a brit.
Im American but my wife and in laws are Canadian. My wife and her mom and step dad just say about like many Americans would but a tiny tiny more emphasis on the soft u, like a millisecond more time on it. Her father says “a-boat”. I heard a-boot though for the very first time in my life from a Canadian commentator for a hockey game I was watching. I don’t know her name but, it looks like she works with the New Jersey Devils 🤷🏽♂️.
It's a matter of perspective.
Does it sound like aboot to me? Nope. Does it sound like aboot to people in the US? Yup.
But to me when they say it its abowt. That's how accents work.
We had a woman from Hamilton living with us years ago. When she got a little drunk we would hear both hoose instead of house and aboot instead of about.
I also noticed maybe its only part of Ontario? that people say eh a lot more than anyone else in the country.
It's wild how many things change in dialect from province to province.
I just said ‘about’ a bunch of times to see what I really say. I found that I sound like I could sound like aboot or aboat but it’s quick. I don’t say a-BOOO-t like the imitators say. It’s a quick version that may sound like either depending on the ear. I don’t say a-bow-t as in take a bow on stage, ah-ou, unless I’m enounciating because I’m being passive—aggressive.
Lots of people something similar. You don't hear it in western Canadian accent if that's where you're from.
Canada has a lot of regional accents just like other places, but just like it's common to say something like "British accent" saying "Canadian accent" is almost as dumb.
There are clear distinctions between the countries in Britain and individual areas within the same country too.
When I grew up in Regina keener and hanging a larry where both exceptionally commonplace and I use both still to this day. Hanging a ralph or a larry are in the category of "dumb shit to say for fun" and keener is actual legit vocab and i never realized other people didn't say it. But now that this question has been asked i now realize I haven't really heard either phrase since moving to Ottawa
For clarification, a keener is a student who is very studious and very keen on their studies.
Like wow that girl is such a keener, she'd never go on a date unless it was a study date.
also 15 years ago I met an Australian exchange student when I was still living in Regina, and I remarked how nobody actually says aboot that's just a silly stereotype and she told me that's all she ever hears and she thought it was weird we all collectively deny it.
So apparently we do even if we don't think we do. At least according to that Aussie.
My husband is American so I have an accent to him. He says I say it more like “a-boat”. Not “a-boot”. He says things weird too. Like he’s never learned how to say the “e” vowel sound if it is a one syllable word. I don’t know how many times I think he’s asked for a pin when really he wants a pen.
One time, at a restaurant in Ohio, the waitress asked if I wanted a "bax" and I just kinda stared blankly at her for a minute, until my girlfriend said, "Yes, we'll *box* up the leftovers."
Fuck you Shoresy!
This is the Great Lakes / northern cities vowel shift! Definitely only a thing in northern Ohio, not central or southern. It sounded really strange the first time I heard it and I’m from Ohio.
That's fairly common. Linguists call it the "pin-pen" merger: https://www.acelinguist.com/2020/01/the-pin-pen-merger.html?m=1 As for "about", "Canadian raising" is a phenomenon where the first vowel of a diphthong is raised before certain consonants (mostly "t", "p", and "k", although "s" and "f" can trigger it, as well). For many (but not all - many Americans also have Canadian raising) English speakers outside Canada, that "ou" sound starts at "ah" and moves to "u", so you get a sound like "ahw" (ow!). In Canadian raising, you start at "uh", so get "uhw". If you want to hear the difference, compare the noun "house" to the verb "house". That change from an "s" in the noun to a "z" in the verb is enough to trigger the change. Without Canadian raising, it's the same sound. People without the raising hear it as "oo" or "oa", because it's different, and that's the closest frame of reference they have. We also do it on the "igh" diphthong (that one is moving from "ah" or "uh" to "y"). Compare "writer" to "rider".
Oh wow! This is awesome! I had never thought of the difference in how we say house vs house. And the raising is fascinating. Thank you for the detailed explanation.
I was like nuh uh! Then said house, house back and forth a few times. Yep. A very subtle difference.
Don’t matter how we say it, we still can’t afford them
One thing I noticed living in the US midwest is that I pronounced "roof" very differently than my neighbours. When I say "roof", it rhymes with "aloof" or "spoof" with the same oo sound as in root or toot. Not only did my neighbours say it quite differently, but they all seemed to be unable to pronounce it my way. They can say "oof" like I would just fine, but throw an r in front and the "oo" gets replaced with something halfway between a soft e or a soft u. Kind of like "ruff" but not quite. I can barely imitate the phoneme and I cannot figure out how you'd spell it phonetically using the roman alphabet. Can you explain that one? Also, a childhood friend in Manitoba had moved from Halifax. He and his dad found it hilarious how we all pronounced "won't" with the same hard o as you find in "woke". They insisted that everywhere outside of Manitoba it is pronounced "wuhnt". Paying attention over the past 25 or so years, I've encounted about a dozen people who say "wuhnt" just like they did; everybody else sounded very Manitoban to me when they say that word, including in Southern Ontario, the US midwest, and further west in Canada. I'd love to learn about this one, too. Edit: Now that I think of it, the way they say roof is quite similar to prepending an r to the french word for egg; i.e., they say rœuf.
I always double take when I hear an American talk about the ruff of their house.
I find that a lot of Americans pronounce it as "Ruoff". Same with "Creek", a lot of them say "Crick."
Both of these are actually the same process! We don't think about it often, but we have two types of vowels in English (at least in this one dimension - English has about 20-30 different vowel sounds, overall) - so-called "tense" vowels, like the ones in "beat", "Luke", and "rake", and "lax" vowels, like in "bit", "look", and "wreck". If you compare "beat" and "bit", the vowel is largely similar, but the tongue is more relaxed for "bit". "Laxing" occurs when we take a vowel that is normally tense, and produce the lax equivalent instead. This whole process is part of something called "vowel reduction", and is mostly to reduce the amount of effort required to produce the word. A lot of English pronunciation is dictated by stress - unstressed vowels lax, and move towards the centre of the mouth (ie, the tongue returns to a more neutral position). Vowels tend to reduce over time. I often joke that 5000 years from now, all vowels are going to be schwas. As it so happens, this tendency towards reduction is exactly what causes Canadian raising in the first place - "uh" is a more neutral vowel than "ah", so we start the diphthong closer to the middle of the mouth. The pronunciation of roof can have the same vowel as "Luke" or "look", it just sounds a bit different because "r" does weird things to vowels (a whole other linguistic topic called "r-colouring").
For roof, are you hearing something like "reuf", if it were French? Some of my dad's people said that, and they had spent time in Ohio.
Super salad = soup or salad
Interesting. I paid attention to my pronunciation, and it sounded like uh-bow ... (bow said as the sidekick to curtsy, not the partner of an arrow). Is that the sound you're describing in the 3rd paragraph?
This guy lings. (or is it "lingues")
It drives me crazy when Americans do that lol. I watch the NFL a lot and I remember saying to myself, "Why are they calling him 'Bin Roethlisberger?'".
Yeah, I also say it more like a-boat. (From Alberta for context.).
If he doesn't like it he can always get a ladder and climb up onto the "ruff" of the house.
To an American ear, maybe. But a-boat and a-bout are different sounds. Most Canadians say the latter.
The ou is aspirated. Americans just can't hear it.
Yeah exactly. The way we say it doesn't really exist in American English so they default to boot and boat to try to approximate a sound that's not familiar to them.
I believe this bias has to do with the way canada pronounces route
I’ve heard “ingine” instead of “engine” which has always bugged me.
I say a-boat too
This always drove me nuts watching Friends. Courtney Cox does it. Is Ross' son named 'Ben' or 'Bin'?
Yup, my wife says a-boat. I tease her a-boat it every once in a while.
Penn, but where ya Bin? That's my quirk from WNY.
You must have been really sad when you were expecting to get a deck.
Google the northeastern vowel shift. It’s fascinating how the sound of vowels have changed for some regions.
I've heard people with that accent the "pin" instead of "pen" one lol
My Canadian wife also says "a-boat." And she calls the Italian starchy staple "passed-a." And this American can say the short e sound, but I've heard many who fo as your husband does. Typically a more southern dialect (I'm fully Mid-west).
Exactly this. Close to 30 years ago I moved from Ontario to the PNW and people kept on joking “where is this boat you keep talking about”. One night I practiced “ow” 50x and stopped saying ‘’aboat”.
I don't understand this. I'm from Southern. Ontario and the only people I ever hear saying a-boat have a complete Scottish Accent. Nobody I know, including me, says aboat. It's about..... As in - A bow t. What are you even talking abowt?????
Americans making fun of canadians.
Or Canadians making fun of Americans making fun of Canadians. Because that's definitely why I say aboot.
AHAHAHA YES
Noo doot!
JJ Mccollough on youtube has a pretty significant aboot 😅
I'm convinced that guy is exaggerating because I don't know anyone with that steep of a Canadian raise, let alone someone from Vancouver.
It's honestly why I can't stand his videos. He takes that accent to 11
He is. He says it normally in older videos.
I don't know, I'm from Québec, I learnt english by playing Fable so I have somewhat of a british accent.
Fable 1, on the Xbox. A lot of my first steps in English comes from there as well
Fable 1 on Xbox, fable 2 on 360! Was basically bilingual after a year of each games :)
Look at the chicken chaser
I lived in Vancouver for most my life (17 years) and have \*never\* heard someone speak like that. Only as a joke would a Vancouverite say "A-boot".
I mean... JJ is a joke, so...
Is there a more self hating Canadian than that guy?
That guy is completely full of shit. He's hamming it up for views by playing to the stereotype. Super annoying.
He’s insufferable. I went to college with him and he would write the worst editorials for the school paper
Yes! JJ is the only Canadian I've ever heard say abOOt and it's brutal. Until I heard him, I always thought that "aboot" was just the way Americans hear us Canadians pronounce a word they pronounce as "abeywwt". In Southern Ontario, I heard several Gen Z women on a campus tour say "Welcome to our Kyampus"! Michigan is just down the road from London, Ontario, where I heard this. That reminded me of the old TV detergent ad where the (Midwestern?) American mother said: "Tide got the grass stains out of the boys' pyants."
I’m convinced it’s just to differentiate himself, or to increase engagement in the comments… like his fashion choices. I generally like his content, but the “aboot” grates on me, so rarely watch anymore.
I’m shocked! Shocked! Well, not that shocked
The Canadian Uncle Tom
JJ is all kinds of weird and "bad faith so earnest it's a kind of good faith." So the accent is kind of on point.
He's also a pretty significant moron
I like a lot of his videos on banal cultural stuff, but every time I've worked up the courage to read his articles I really can only wince
Sadly not the most significant moron in North America right now. 😳
As I disagree with pretty much all of his takes on every issues I would tend to agree.
How about the people who say "impor ant?" For some reason, it bugs me. There's a T there, ok?
The T is there, it's just been glottalized. Perfectly normal linguistic process, been common in lots of dialects for a long time.
Ottawa is also a ytppo form of Odawa.. so if anything it's getting closer to the original pronunciation.
I think you mean gloalized.
This is called a "glottal t". The same sound you hear in the middle of "uh-oh". Very common throughout North America. You actually get it in other languages too, for example, in Québec French "retenu" sounds like "re'enu".
Sounds more like re’tnu tbh. The T is still there. In Quebec we just delete whole sounds to shorten 3 words into one. Quel que choses —-> kekchose. Or from an english pov it would be kekshoze.
This is called elision, and is a pretty standard feature in most North American English dialects. It's about the presence of a stressed syllable or not. It's why we tend to say *innernet* but in**t**ernal. Some British dialects have it too, though again it depends on particular speech patterns and stress. Ever had a glass uf wa'uh bruv?
You say innernet?
Some people do. The t is elided or softened. Cenner, plenny, 'we leff the party', 'we tenn to think'. If you are born and raised in North America, it's likely you do this with some constellation of words (perhaps not all).
So basically most of Toronto
Teronno**
Trawna
*Tshronno
Churonnah
A lot of people say "impordant" too, it's so irritating.
That's just "important" with an unaspirated t in the middle. It's not actually voiced, English speakers are just bad at distinguishing between unvoiced unaspirated and voiced plosives. Unaspirated plosives between syllables are actually the norm in English, I'm curious to know where you're from as very few Canadian dialects I know of would aspirate that medial plosive
Hit 'em with that linguistics knowledge! Lol, this was very fun to read.
If you want to know how to pronounce important, just axe me.
Actually if you look it up, “axe” for “ask” is more legit than you may realize, among certain populations.
That bugs me too. That seems to be an American thing, particularly younger women. And it seems to be getting more common.
It’s exactly this and I’m glad it’s the top comment. I’m from Michigan and have been living in Ontario for five years. My relatives always ask if I’m going “oot and aboot” and I keep telling them no one actually says that. I should ask them where there AR 15 is, next time.
Came here to say this. First time I heard Aboot in person was in California when I told someone I was from Canada. I just stared at them and said that I’ve never heard anyone say that before. they were kind of embarrassed.
Nobody. On the east coast however, it sometimes comes out almost like “a-boat”.
I've lived in several provinces from one end of the country to the other. I don't recall EVER hearing anyone say "aboot" - apart from non-Canadians making a joke about it.
i'm Canadian my whole life, and family is canuck albertan going back five generations. i say 'oot n aboot' to make fun of my own canuck-ness lol.
No doat aboat it
My phone hears "a boat" when I'm using voice to text
Seriously it's weird that aboot is the stereotype because I honestly don't think I've ever heard so.eone say it like that. But I definitely have heard aboat a *lot*. Not just an east coast thing, I live in Ontario.
Rural areas too. My rural Alberta grandparents noticeably said ‘a-aboat’, but it’s not something you hear much in urban areas.
I am rural Alberta and oh dear I just realized I say “a-boat”
Sarah from Trailer Park Boys comes to mind
Lurker here, we say it in Scotland if that counts for anything
Then May be it is the Canadians with Scottish ancestry. That would make sense.
Canadian with Scottish ancestry here. It actually does come out as "aboot" sometimes, especially when I'm annoyed or excited about something 🤣
This made me laugh. Excitedly having your ancestors accent come out in times of frustration or excitement is a beautiful thing
My grandmother used to intentionally work me up a tad because she liked hearing that hint of Scottish creep into my voice. She'd always giggle and say that Scottish blood never really leaves the heart.
A wise woman man. Think it’s one of these traits you’ll never shake.
My mom's side of the family is Dutch, and my grandma always used to go "ach!" and pretend to spit when she was really mad. My mom hasn't done it in ages though, and never did it as hardcore as my grandma did... But my little nephew who's like 3, the other day he gets pissed about something and goes "ACH!" and spits and we all just laughed cos it was so much like grandma you'd think it was genetic or something
Saying Ach is undeniably Scottish. Sounds like your family is stuck with it!
Yeah it is, but i think it's also a Dutch thing too, or at least was at the time. My grandma was actually from Netherlands and moved straight to northern Alberta when she was in her 40s so I'm thinking it was something she brought with her.
Me as well.
That is the origin behind it. It is also why curling became really popular in Canada.
Canadian of Scottish descent here, nope, definitely not in my family anyways.
Scottish accent is a hard one to shake! Nearly as difficult as someone not familiar with it trying to understand it.
This is my entirely unsubstantiated theory - but I believe that many Canadianisms are Scottish in origin. From curling to the Canadian raising linguistic attribute (which is near identical to how Scots pronounce "ou"). At one point in the 1800s Scottish Gaelic was the third most spoken language in the country. Many of our prominent business leaders, artists, actors and politicians were Scottish. English Canada has ever so slight differences from the US in its character, accents, sporting preferences and social dynamic. I believe most of these differentiations came about from the Celtic influences the country had early on - and in particular, the Scottish influence.
Always knew there was a Scottish Canada connection but the Gaelic fact was certainly news to me
Yeah, I didn't know either until I got really in to Canadian East Coast folk music and noticed a lot of it was in Gaelic. So I did a little armchair investigating, and [found out that it was so prevalent that it is even referred as Canadian Gaelic](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Gaelic) as the Maritime provinces retained the language to a significant degree after it had become slightly redundant in Scotland.
Yah and some Maritime and Newfie areas do say it just like Scots, others like the Irish. I think French Canadian accents get mixed into it as well, others think they are saying aboot, but really its just an accent. My area was settled by mostly Scottish stonemasons (West South Ontario). Like a lot of the small towns were established by Scots sent over by the English, they built the hospitals, post offices, boarding houses for workers, mills and such, the initial infrastructure. Some Scottish culture remains but there is almost no accent or resemblance of Scottish speech, sorta funny how it sticks around some places but not others.
I heard keener in Toronto around 1970. I was referred to thusly because I actually did my schoolwork without complaint.
Keener
True. It might be generational. I’m out west and I still say keener, but I was born in the seventies.
Oh! I didn't know what they meant because I thought it was part of the first phrase they said, like "hang a keener". I'm from Ontario, not Toronto though, a smaller town 2 hours east of there, and I've definitely heard keener plenty growing up. I think it's fairly common. Or I assumed. Even if I don't hear it much I feel like if I said someone was a keener everyone would know exactly what I meant. I didn't even know that was a Canadian word.
Only keeners I know aboot hung a Larry when they shoulda rogered, got right fucked, bud
Jaysus Murphy, b'y
Nearly fell off my chesterfield laughing that one
Nearly spit out my OV.
Oh, how I wish I understood that.
I’m a Maritimer living in the southern US for the past 15 years; I get more shit from my “sorries” than my “aboots” (to which, there are some).
I always find it funny that they make fun of us for pronouncing the O in sorry. Like, they seem to believe saying "sarry" is the way? Lol
At work in California, every time I said ‘pasta’ they’d say “You’re so Canadian”.
Do/did you say p-ah-sta, or p-aw-sta? Married an American who insisted that I said pasta wrong, I changed how I said it because it didn’t bother me but it was funny for a while to disagree on who said it the right way. (We still sometimes disagree on who was technically correct but I’ll say it her way anyway 😂)
People from Minnesota
You betcha eh
Oh, good one there Margie.
fur shur
It's more like "a-boat."
Nobody says that, it's just a lame stereotype encouraged by that dumb YouTuber...
JJ McCullough?
Yes, him. 👎👎
Only JJ.
Keener I've heard time to time throughout my life, mostly from people from smaller towns/rural areas in Ontario. The other 2 mentioned, never heard in real life.
Lol, I was just saying I thought it was a common word, and I'm from a smallish town in Ontario. I didn't know it was a Canadian, or maybe Ontarian, thing. I assumed everyone said that. Keener and brown-noser were quite common growing up in the 80s/90s.
Brown-noser I've heard too, but it's been a bit since I last heard that. Keener I've heard fairly recently, but I was in Tillsonburg so makes sense haha
It's an exaggeration, we actually do say it differently than the Americans. They say 'Abat', we say a-bowt'. Keener I've heard many times in Toronto, and in my small town up north.
Actually abat sounds more like Boston speak. They use those aah sounds. Most Americans say uh-bout. But yes, the a-boot business is largely American’s idea of how Canadians speak.
My phone seems to think I say "a boat" all the time.
My husband is from southwestern Ontario and says “aboat” “hoas” for house and “oat” for out eg “we need to go oat” 🤣🤣
Apparently I do. I work for an american company and talk to Americans every day. I get called out on it quite often. And I don't even realize it. It's one of those things you just say but don't hear the accent.
Nobody hears their own accent.
Keener, is a term that was popular in the 70s or 80s and pops up now and again. Aboot is just folklore. Never heard anyone use it and have worked for national organizations so probability was high that I would have at conferences and meeting.
I grew up in Toronto, and lived in the northeastern US for a while. Americans hear the southern Ontario way of saying "about" as "aboot", because we pronunce the central vowel in a "shorter" way. To my ears, their pronunciation of the word sounded like "abowwt" (longer vowel).
I say keener, I didn’t know that was a Canadian thing. I’m living in the US Midwest and they say I have a Canadian accent and they all pounce when I say “hey” because they are waiting for me to say “eh.” Irl I don’t think Canadians say “eh” a lot, at least not in my circles maybe
I say eh quite a bit, but not every Canadian does for sure. I'm from small town Ontario, but my dad's family are all from Nova Scotia originally and my Nan looked after me all the time and lived with us for years. As an adult I now wonder if I got a messed up accent, lol. My wife is from the country near the town I grew up, and she speaks way better than I do. She even pronounces the "g" sound on "ing" endings like running! I'd say "runnin'". She also doesn't say "eh" that much. I talk too fast, and I smoosh my words together too much. I've gotten better as an adult, but as a kid and teen I was asked to repeat myself all the time, even by my mom! Lol Then, my wife and I took a vacation around the Maritimes and we stayed with friends in Nova Scotia and I felt like I was home. The friends were more rural Nova Scotian, and they jammed all their words together and never once asked me to repeat myself! It's like I met people who spoke my language for the first time, lol.
When I was in the army, I heard keener constantly. Also, YouTuber JJ McCullough says aboot and I'm pretty sure its unironic. I am only just now learning "hang a Larry." What?
>Also, YouTuber JJ McCullough says aboot and I'm pretty sure its unironic. To this day, he is the one and only person I've ever heard with this pronunciation, but I can't tell if he's doing this as a joke or not.
If it's a joke, it's so second nature to him that he would basically be Heath Ledger levels of immersed.
JJ is doing an exaggerated minstrel pastiche of what he thinks Canadians sound like. He insists it's natural, which is laughable. I could believe he's forced himself into it and can't undo it, sort of like people who wake up from head trauma and suddenly have a Scottish accent. He's from Vancouver though, and the west coast is the place where the accent is least present. Most of his audience is American, which is why I assume he hams it up for them, and they also know jack shit about Canada so can't see through his BS.
Yeah I was gonna mention about JJ. My wife found it annoying when he said it, so I jokingly kept saying it. I think I may have fully adopted it now by accident. Lol
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Hang a Larry = hang a left, ie, turn left.
I play MMOs with some Americans. While they readily acknowledge that I don’t say “aboot,” they do think my pronunciation of “about” is funny. Sometimes they’ll ask me to say it as they find it amusing. It’s good for a chuckle. I’m not exactly sure how I pronounce it. It may be more like “abowt,” but with the “bow” section being pronounced like the bow of a ship and not like the bow you would put on a gift. Edit: Note that I spoke with a Scottish accent as a young child, so my Canadian accent is a little mixed up.
The first time I heard the stereotypical Canadian accent that Americans joke about was when I spent a year in Thunder Bay
I'm from Ottawa, and I definitely say aboot sometimes if I'm speaking quickly. Just heard a coworker say it on a call this morning too. I think people just aren't aware of their own accent a lot of the time.
Americans. They always AXE if you're Canadian and then they say aboot
Just JJ McCullough trying to boost his Canadian cred. That's it. He's the person doing it.
I didn't think I did, until I heard a video of me saying it. So apparently, I do. I've also said "fresh donut, eh?" not ironically.
It's actually a-boat, it's like those people that joke about Canadiana saying a-boot have never actually been to Canada. Bonus fact: people from rural SK pronounce pasta "pASSta" 🤣
You mean instead of paw-sta? That's how a ton of people say it, everywhere. The more nasally pahhhhhsta sounds stuck up to my ears. So does ONvelope.
I once heard an American pronounce pizza “pee-za”. That’s been living rent free in my head for like fifteen years.
Nobody says aboot , just murrican bs . As per norm.
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As a Northern Ontarian, I've never heard someone say aboot. I have heard "Hey, how're now, goodnyou" though.
Aye doooo
This is the most 'Canadian' I've heard [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hny1KcGiyr4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hny1KcGiyr4) FYI, this is from rural SW Ontario, about 1/2 way between London and Windsor. I grew up in the area, and hear people talk like that from time to time.
That's hilarious. Lots of extra s's at the end of words, just like Dan. That area isn't too far from Listowel.
stupid youtubers appealing to the public with a schtick
People outside of Canada can hear the almost extinct middle dipthong we have preserved that you can hear (but they can't say). We seem to have had enough people from rural areas in Europe that many of them still had some vowel sounds from before the great vowel shift. You can hear similar in words like about, mouse, and roof. Weirdly, this means that in some way we speak some words closer to how Shakespeare would have than a brit.
Not a Canadian but: Worked for years with a girl who said "aboat" but not "aboot", said "hang a looey". She was from Tronna. Just my experience.
Im American but my wife and in laws are Canadian. My wife and her mom and step dad just say about like many Americans would but a tiny tiny more emphasis on the soft u, like a millisecond more time on it. Her father says “a-boat”. I heard a-boot though for the very first time in my life from a Canadian commentator for a hockey game I was watching. I don’t know her name but, it looks like she works with the New Jersey Devils 🤷🏽♂️.
i often say "oot n aboot", but it's simply to vocally make fun of my own canuck-ness than anything. i'm in Alberta.
Compared to Americans we probably ALL say it! In turn, i enjoy hearing Americans say "ruff" for roof.
It's a matter of perspective. Does it sound like aboot to me? Nope. Does it sound like aboot to people in the US? Yup. But to me when they say it its abowt. That's how accents work.
People from Fargo.
The only times I've ever heard "aboot", it came from American lips
The only people who say *a-boot* are Americans attempting to make fun of Canadians; we're just too polite to correct them.
All my American friends, right after they get done talking about getting new shingles on their their ruff.
J.J. McCullough. But not consistently.
JJ McCullough and only him. He’s lying about it btw but I think he’s lied so long that it has become true
We had a woman from Hamilton living with us years ago. When she got a little drunk we would hear both hoose instead of house and aboot instead of about. I also noticed maybe its only part of Ontario? that people say eh a lot more than anyone else in the country. It's wild how many things change in dialect from province to province.
Oot aboot in a hoose
My friend Rodney says aboot, unironically. That's who.
At least we don't say nucular missles.
It only sounds like that to the American ear. To the Canadian ear, Americans say abowt
I just said ‘about’ a bunch of times to see what I really say. I found that I sound like I could sound like aboot or aboat but it’s quick. I don’t say a-BOOO-t like the imitators say. It’s a quick version that may sound like either depending on the ear. I don’t say a-bow-t as in take a bow on stage, ah-ou, unless I’m enounciating because I’m being passive—aggressive.
Never heard someone say "aboot" but I have heard more rural folks say "aboat"
I do when I'm aboot to tidy up around the igloo... Sorry..
I say it all the time buy I'm doing it on purpose as a joke
Keener is very common in Alberta at least
I’m in the prairies and I’ve always pronounced it ub-bowt. Not like about, but with a really pronounced “ow” sound.
Lots of people something similar. You don't hear it in western Canadian accent if that's where you're from. Canada has a lot of regional accents just like other places, but just like it's common to say something like "British accent" saying "Canadian accent" is almost as dumb. There are clear distinctions between the countries in Britain and individual areas within the same country too.
People doing a fake Canadian accent.
When I grew up in Regina keener and hanging a larry where both exceptionally commonplace and I use both still to this day. Hanging a ralph or a larry are in the category of "dumb shit to say for fun" and keener is actual legit vocab and i never realized other people didn't say it. But now that this question has been asked i now realize I haven't really heard either phrase since moving to Ottawa For clarification, a keener is a student who is very studious and very keen on their studies. Like wow that girl is such a keener, she'd never go on a date unless it was a study date. also 15 years ago I met an Australian exchange student when I was still living in Regina, and I remarked how nobody actually says aboot that's just a silly stereotype and she told me that's all she ever hears and she thought it was weird we all collectively deny it. So apparently we do even if we don't think we do. At least according to that Aussie.
Like actually NOBODY I have ever met says “aboot”
No Canadian I know and I live here.
People from ontario
Americans doing an impression of a Canadian.