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Speech Differences along the Ontario-United States Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2017

Walter S. Avis
Walter S. Avis*
Affiliation:
R.M.C. Kingston
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Extract

Not long ago a Torontonian shopping in a large department store just across the border asked where he could find chesterfields. On following directions, he was somewhat dismayed to find himself at the cigar counter!

Such experiences often occur in life along the border, as any Ontarioan who has tried to buy blinds or serviettes in New York or Michigan will know. When he has been across the line for some time, however, he discovers that most of his neighbours pull down their shades before retiring and tuck in their table napkins before eating spaghetti Italian style. The visitor from Ontario who stays with American friends just south of the line learns that they turn on faucets at the kitchen sink rather than taps and hold up their pants with suspenders, not braces (trousers is “elegant diction” for most men in both countries.)

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 1 , Issue 1 , October 1954 , pp. 13 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association. 1954

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References

Notes

1 The term American in this paper refers to the speakers of English living just south of the Ontario border, roughly between Sault Ste. Marie and Cornwall.

2 See Hans Kurath. A Wart Geography of the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 1943), where the principal speech areas of the Eastern United States are delineated. The dialect boundaries are based on an analysis of the lexical items in the Linguistic Atlas of the United States and Canada (hereafter referred to as the Atlas). Subsequent studies of phonological and grammatical evidence in the Atlas promise to confirm the main outline of Dr. Kurath's conclusions. See, for example. E. Bagby Atwood. Verb Forms of the Eastern United States (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1953).

3 See Marcus L. Hansen and J. B. Brebner. The Mingling of the Canadian and American Peoples (New Haven. 1940, pp. 95 ff.

4 Many of the more regrettable cultural borrowings of the last half-century are pointed out by Watson Kirkconneli in “Canadian Toponomy and the Cultural Stratification of Canada.” Onomastica, VII (1954), 12-15.

5 The Reverend Brother Ptus of DeLasalle College. Toronto, is at present engaged in a pilot study of this area; it is to be hoped that the results of his investigations will not be long getting into print.

6 See Raven I McDavid. Jr., “Midland and Canadian Words in Upstate New York,” American Speech, XXVI (1951). 248-56

7 Ibid, p. 253, and a reprinted broadcast talk by Dr. McDavid. “Why We Talk the Way We Do,” CBC Times. III (Feb 11-17, 1951). 2. Sixty years ago A. F. Chamberlain. in “Dialect Research on Canada.” Dialect Notes. I (1894). 377-81, lists coal oil along with several other expressions as “current Americanisms.“

8 Apparently a borrowing from Canadian French, shivaree has a remarkable history. See A. L. Davis and R. I. McDavid. Jr . “Shivaree: An Example of Cultural Diffusion,” American Speech, XXIV (1949), 249-55.

9 The foregoing statements concerning stook/shook in England are based on the Linguistic Atlas survey of southern England carried out by Dr. Guy S. Lowman and Henry Collins and on information supplied by Professor Harold Orton of the University of Leeds, co-director of the Linguistic Atlas of England.

10 David W. Reed. “Eastern Words in California.” Publications of the American Dialect Society. 21 (April. 1954). 3-15

11 This information actually comes from three sources, two questionnaires circulated by myself at Queen's University in 1950 and at R.M.C. in 1954; the third source is the Linguistic Atlas collection for eastern and western Canada. Only a few of the items occur in all the sources thus the disparity in the total number of responses from item to item. Almost all Ontario counties are represented in the materials, informants from the larger cities and from areas in immediate contact with the border states being most numerous.