A Bit More Detail

The Toronto Star's Tara Deschamps reports on the slow mutation of Canadian English in pace with California's dialect.

People living in Toronto and California might live on opposite ends of the continent, but they have at least one thing in common.

They both like to get down … with their vowels.

New research says the Canadian accent is going through a subtle shift, making “laugh” sound like “loff,” “red dress” sound like “rad drass” and “milk” sound like “melk.”

It’s all part of a change quietly seeping into our language to make us pronounce vowels lower than usual, say sociolinguists from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

A similar shift, at times borrowing some qualities from the Valley Girl cadence, is simultaneously happening to Californians, but researcher Paul De Decker says, “It is not making us sound more like them. We are just both on the same path at the same time.”

At 3 Quarks Daily, Colin Eatock writes about the factors distinguishing Canada from the United States.

Eatock's is an interesting essay, presenting--consciously and otherwise--a particularly English Canadian perspective on Canadian identity. He excludes official bilingualism as a marker, for instance, since he identifies it not as a marker of a pan-Canadian biculturalism so much as it does the existence of Québec's status as a distinct society marked by its French language within greater Canada. Québec's relationship to the United States is complex, but because Québec's distinctiveness versus the United States is easily provable, more so than the comparable English Canadian case, Eatock focuses on English Canada. He still uses the term "Canada", mind. He's right in pointing out that monarchy, a marker of a distinctive Canadian political identity, isn't so relevant at the lived level; yes, we're path of the Commonwealth and we have a Governor-General, but monarchism isn't an active choice so much as it's a default setting we just leave be because we can't stand another constitutional debate.

Canada, Eatock suggests, is more left-wing than the United States--universal public health care, gun control, multiculturalism, all are cited--and favour state intervention to a greater degree than the United States does. (The question as to whether state intervention is intrinsically left-wing is an interesting one that he doesn't explore.) The author identifies the relatively stronger links of Canada with Europe as an important factor, but that--as he acknowledges--isn't so important as Canada's non-participation in the history and myths of the United States, that self-consciously revolutionary and ideologically-defined country. Canadian identity is taken for granted, perhaps as a consequence of the difficulty of coming up with a convincing articulation; American identity is something consciously, constantly articulated.

The USA was founded on a set of political principles, clearly set forth in the constitution and other documents. Americans have a term for ideas that are at odds with the nation’s foundational principles: they are called “un-American.” But no idea is “un-Canadian.” Indeed, the term barely exists – if used at all, it would probably be aimed at someone who doesn’t like hockey.

But enough about politics. There are other complexities to explore here.

Here’s a big one: Canadians are less – much less – nationalistic than Americans. Nothing makes us feel more not-like-Americans than seeing a bunch of agitated Yanks chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A!” We think Americans can be insensitive and superior when vacationing in other countries, so we stitch Canadian flags to our backpacks, lest we be mistaken for one. And we disapprove of the way that the US education system so strongly emphasizes American history, American geography and American literature, to the exclusion of so much else. Most Canadians have heard of the first President of the United States. How many Americans could name Canada’s first Prime Minister?

But just a moment – how many Canadians could name Canada’s first Prime Minister? Even though Sir John A. MacDonald is on our ten-dollar bill, poll after embarrassing poll has shown that plenty of Canadians have no idea who he was. In our efforts to be as un-nationalistic as possible, we have chosen not to learn about ourselves. How many Canadians know that a Canadian invented the light bulb, or the game of basketball? (Consult Google, if you don’t believe me!) If America is inward-looking to a fault, Canada is too self-effacing. For better or for worse, that’s the way it is – and it’s a huge difference.

The “nationalism-gap” between Canada and the USA manifests itself in other ways, too. For instance, we Canadians like to think of ourselves as less bellicose than Americans. I say “like to think” because this hasn’t always been the case. Canada marched off to World War I in 1914 (not 1917, as the Americans did), and to World War II in 1939 (not 1941, when Pearl Harbor was attacked). But after WW II, we had a change of heart: Canada’s armed forces were scaled down and retooled as a peacekeeping force.

This made us quite pleased with ourselves – and from our moral high ground, we scorned American military adventurism. We sheltered draft-dodgers during the Vietnam era and shook our heads at the invasion of Iraq. It’s true that we did send our army off to Afghanistan, as a post-9/11 gesture of solidarity – but this was only because we thought it was going to be yet another peacekeeping mission. How wrong we were! One more point: Canada has plenty of uranium, and an assortment of nuclear reactors dotting the landscape. We could build a bomb any time we wanted to. We just don’t want to.

If America constantly aspires to be the best in the world, Canadians can be uncomfortable with striving for excellence. We are less competitive and more risk-adverse than Americans, and we certainly don’t want to appear “uppity.” There are a few exceptions: we sincerely want our national hockey team will come back from the Winter Olympics with gold medals. But in many areas of human endeavour – the arts, sciences, commerce – Canadians often take a curious pride in being at the centre of the herd, rather than out in front.

And there’s more. Americans are friendly (if they like you), and Canadians are polite (whether they like you or not). Racism in America can be shockingly blunt; racism in Canada is carefully veiled – and many Canadians will deny it exists in their country. Americans are more inclined to take a strong stand on one side or another of an issue. Canadians like to look at things from all perspectives, and are reluctant to unequivocally ally themselves with any single view.

Eatock concludes by noting the contrast between the American Declaration of Independence's declaration of "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" as key values, and the Canadian constitution's promises of "peace, order and good government."

Thoughts? In the final analysis, Eatock's essay seems to argue that English Canada is distinct from the United States--distinct enough to count as non-American, at least--because English Canadians don't buy into American styles of narrative and self-examination. It's a matter of degree, sure, given the permeability of the American-Canadian border, but it's a notable degree. It also manages to pose an interesting question as to the nature and extent of European-Canadian links beyond the obvious ones: is the Canadian state as civilianized, largely non-military, as many European states are? how much history does Canada share with Europe that it doesn't with the United States?