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I would love to do an experiment and put 13 people in a room, 1 person each from say, Seattle, San Diego, Boise, Denver, Kansas City, Minneapolis, Indianapolis, Pittsburgh, DC, Syracuse, Toronto, Regina and Vancouver, and have each person read out loud a paragraph in a book in front of 100 people and have each one guess which 3 are the Canadians based on their accent. I would bet my next social security check that no more than 10 out of those 100 people would be able to corectly guess which 3 are from Canada.
That would be interesting, but to make it fair, two paragraphs have to be read out. One written by an American, the other Canadian.
I work at an international school in Colombia...of the 70 or so teachers, about 12 are recruited from North America. We always have a few Canadians but it´s mostly Americans.
The parents (many of whom don´t speak any English) seem to have developed a system to ¨distinguish¨ who is American and who is Canadian. If teachers speak decent Spanish, tell you good morning and hello and are generally helpful and pleasant, they must be Canadian. If they don´t do any of this, they must be American.
I always make the effort, so everyone thinks I am from Canada. It´s pretty sobering to think that this is what the reputation of Americans has come to here, but I guess some of them ¨earned¨ it for the rest of us.
There's a certain announcer on local radio whom I am convinced is Canadian because every so often he says "about," and it's just ever so slightly different from the way an American would say it.
Let me guess: KNX 1070 Newsradio in Los Angeles and his name is Chris Sedens. He is the voice for evenings and weekends on KNX.
I keep the car radio tuned for the traffic reports whenever I visit L.A. and listen to the internet stream occasionally to keep up with L.A., California, and mostly for National/World news when I'm back home due to the lack of a newsradio station here. I also listen to WBBM in Chicago and KCBS in S.F., but KNX is my favorite.
Yes he is Canadian. Before coming to the States for KNX, he was a nationally-famous announcer/commentator for TSN (ESPN in Canada).
When the Cuba travel ban was curtailed by Obama during the waning days of his administration, he was guest hosting for that day on the KNX Business Hour at Noon PT and hinted about his (Canadian) relative's visits to Cuba. If you didn't know about his background, that tidbit would not make much sense!
Let me guess: KNX 1070 Newsradio in Los Angeles and his name is Chris Sedens. He is the voice for evenings and weekends on KNX.
I keep the car radio tuned for the traffic reports whenever I visit L.A. and listen to the internet stream occasionally to keep up with L.A., California, and mostly for National/World news when I'm back home due to the lack of a newsradio station here. I also listen to WBBM in Chicago and KCBS in S.F., but KNX is my favorite.
Yes he is Canadian. Before coming to the States for KNX, he was a nationally-famous announcer/commentator for TSN (ESPN in Canada).
When the Cuba travel ban was curtailed by Obama during the waning days of his administration, he was guest hosting for that day on the KNX Business Hour at Noon PT and hinted about his (Canadian) relative's visits to Cuba. If you didn't know about his background, that tidbit would not make much sense!
Yes, that is him!! Great guess on your part; I live in SoCal and listen to KNX every day while driving. Thank you so much for the info and for confirming my assumption that he is Canadian.
Just today I was looking for YouTube videos on how to kill earwigs. I found one by a buy in Canada, and I thought of this thread. He was so obviously Canadian. The way he kept referring to the earwigs he caught as "fellas," even. "Let's see how many of these fellas I got..."
There really isn't even one spoken sentence that a Canadian utters, that isn't obviously different from an American.
And even if an American is from Austin, TX, as a previous poster who claims not to be able to tell the difference -- I just don't see how someone can claim that.
Even in Austin, TX, which I also know well - if someone from Austin made a video about earwigs in the garden, they wouldn't say, "Oh, lets see how many of these fellas I caught today, eh?"
You'd have to be completely dense not to notice that these people were not only not from TX, but that they also didn't fit any norm from any US television show you'd ever seen --- unless you weren't originally from the US.
Same, I can understand around the northern midwest, but anywhere on the coasts or down south I find it hard to believe that people can't recognize Canadians it's just so blatantly obvious to me. Some don't really listen well though. Americans speak differently all over the country so how would Canadians really sound american at best they would pick a particular american accent.
Any word with "ar" as the main vowel gives a Canadian away. Car, park, yard, barb, etc. At least someone from eastern Canada. I have family from Saskatchewan and Manitoba that don't pronounce quite as sharply. But they have a distinct accent nonetheless, with more emphasis on words like "about" or "roof" that give them away.
In the English-speaking provinces of Canada, "Wisconsinese" is about as close as you can come.
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