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I see a movie at a theatre (British spelling) instead of at a theater. And I've always used the u in words like neighbour, harbour, labour, favour, savour, etc. It's how I was taught to spell in school.
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Me as well. As for Theatre...it was more common years ago in the US than today.
You still see it around though. Here is the Lyric Theatre in NYC
I've seen both British and American spellings the times I visited Canada. Similarly, I usually see metric measurements but I am not lying when I say I saw square feet in a real estate advertisement in Toronto or produce weighed in lbs. in a supermarket in Laval, QC. Even more confusing are dates because some people use British day/month/year setting while others write American month/day/year.
Yeah, sometimes usage is ingrained out of habit. In Hong Kong which is otherwise metricised (metricized?), they use square feet for real estate, too.
My experiences seems that people in Ontario use more American spellings than people out here in BC.
I also seem to hear more Ontarians use ZEE instead of ZED.
Anyone else find that ?
My impression from east to west:
Maritimes are more British-oriented (or purely Canadian if you wish).
English in Quebec is very American-influenced. (I'll explains more about this later.)
Eastern and Northern Ontario are more British-oriented but the GTA and the rest of southern have stronger American influences.
The Prairies are quite American influenced too, and then in BC the British/(Canadian) predominance you find in the Maritimes/Eastern-Northern Ontario kind of pops back up to dominate once again.
While the spelling of certain words can be influenced, even regulated through the school system, the use of terms has been more highly influenced by proximity to the U.S.
hoovering - vacuuming
tube - subway
hob - kitchen range
petrol -gasoline - gas
bonnet - hood
boot - trunk
lorry - truck -articulator - tractor trailer
There are endless examples of the influence of the more prevalent Americanized terms and phrases replacing those terms Great Britain exported to Canada even earlier in history such as "chains" and "furlongs" used as 66' for purposes of early acreage measurement of land grants etc., along with some of these:
My Manchester born and raised grandma often confused my brother and I by using the term "fortnight" to indicate a mysterious time frame associated with her comings and goings.
We would not even wish to discuss the monetary system of Great Britain and our thankfully not having to deal with that nonsense.
I am pretty sure that a number of those things in your list were never referred to with the British word by native-born Canadians, because they "arrived" in Canada as innovations from the U.S., with the label they bore from that country.
English-speaking Canadians have always said truck, hood, trunk and elevator ever since those things have existed, AFAIK.
In the university I went for a semester I was sort of "reprimanded" because I kept on using the British spelling (I was told especially about the -s instead of -z, such as realise, organise, analyse etc), while they tended to favour the American one: yet, oddly they used quite a lot of British words as far as I remember.
"ize/ise" can be quite confusing in Canada.
Officially in Canadian spelling it's generally "-ize" that is preferred, except for "analyse".
Even more confusing are dates because some people use British day/month/year setting while others write American month/day/year.
I actually find this lack of consistency extremely annoying.
I mean, if you're in Kingston, Ontario, WTF does 01/09/2018 mean?????
In Quebec, generally speaking it's day/month/year almost all the time, because that makes sense in that it consistent with how French dates are spoken and written. Though even in Quebec on occasion you may have electronic devices that were never changed or can't be changed and spit out the American-style month/day/year.
The Canadian federal government uses year/month/day and uses all four numbers for the year, so that leaves less room for ambiguity.
So today's date in Canadian government circles is 2018/12/17.
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