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The Toronto Accent(s)

I'm down here in NYC for the long weekend, and my wife and I were chatting while in line at the Statue of Liberty ferry, and someone asked us if we were Canadians. It never dawned on me to ask why they thought so, we just had a nice chat with the people in line. Maybe there's something to this Toronto accent thing? I swear I didn't say eh :)
 
I'm sure a lot of Canadians don't even realize they exhibit Canadian Raising.
 
I found what is probably the most comprehensive map of North American dialects.
You need to stare at it a while to figure it all out.

It shows a split in Southern Ontario, south of Toronto, with respect to how certain vowels are pronounced and that Canadian Raising also exists in some south-east coastal areas of the US.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapUnitedStates
 
Jonny5 said:
I found what is probably the most comprehensive map of North American dialects.
You need to stare at it a while to figure it all out.

It shows a split in Southern Ontario, south of Toronto, with respect to how certain vowels are pronounced and that Canadian Raising also exists in some south-east coastal areas of the US.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapUnitedStates
Click to expand...

How interesting such a random part of the US happens to pronounce out and about just like we do. Kinda cool actually. I wonder if there are more areas they missed?
 
Coruscanti Cognoscente said:
Interesting article about "Toronto English" in the Star:

http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/201...n_of_canadian_english_across_generations.html

I figure this thread is close enough.
Click to expand...
As a member of the younger generation (21 yo), I would say that I mostly speak the way young people are described. I don't use OMG, since that's more of girls thing (also use "pretty" instead of "so"), but I'll use he was like "x".

I'm pretty sure I don't use Canadian raising though... I'm also technically from Oakville, not Toronto, and go to university in Waterloo.
 
You sure you don't have Canadian raising?

Nearly everyone on Big Brother Canada does, so it's pretty universal for Canada.

Key words being: house, about, right, etc
 
What is this thread really about? I don't know what Toronto you people live in but, where I live, the only similar accent I hear is a complete mashup of various attempts at a common language.
I was born in Belleville and grew up in Scarborough and have lived in Toronto, Ottawa, and Pickering since. Every time I travel to other parts of Canada I'm asked where I'm from. When I answer "Toronto" I get comments about how I have an accent....an overseas accent.
Makes me laugh.
I just speak in a way I think English is spoken....kind of like the other 2,699,000 other Torontonians do.
If there is a Toronto accent, it is most probably a mash up of various English accents that varies from person to person. That is to say, there is none.
I can't even begin to tell anymore if a person I meet is foreign-born or not.
 
Then throw in the fact that my friends and I just love to talk to each other as if we were from Brixton and voila, you're completely confused.
 
Also, I'm 28 and say shed-jul and geh-raj and batchry.
I don't think there's a common linguistic thread here, is what I'm saying. Toronto is like an experimental repository of the entire world's people. Where would a common accent come from at this time in history?
 
MTown said:
Also, I'm 28 and say shed-jul and geh-raj and batchry.
I don't think there's a common linguistic thread here, is what I'm saying. Toronto is like an experimental repository of the entire world's people. Where would a common accent come from at this time in history?
Click to expand...

What on earth is a batchry???
 
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