O Canada! Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) legalized in Ontario

For every Westerner that gets killed by so-called “Muslim” terrorists, there are hundreds of real Muslims who are killed by those whack-job zealous nuts. Terrorists twist Islam into an excuse for their blood-lust, just like the Crusaders and the KKK did with Christianity. Those assholes who blew up the Towers don’t represent Muslims. And if you think we’re sick of that terrorist shit, how do you think Muslims feel. 99% of terrorist bombs and killings are in Muslim countries with all Muslim victims. Their kids are getting blown up every week by these assholes.

I am a language teacher and have taught English all over the world, including courses on pronunciation, and I do voice acting & puppetry and am a closet linguist. I’ve been studying accents all my life and believe me when I say that 99% of people are not cognizant of their own pronunciation. In fact, even those who notice subtle accent variations in others often are not aware of their own regional distinctiveness. It’s because the brain is hard-wired not to notice things that register within the range we unconsciously perceive as “normal”. For example, I had a lot of students in China (adult language immersion students) who prounounced “n” as “L”. Since they grew up hearing it both ways, both sounds registered as correct with their brain…to the point that they were completely unable to differentiate between the two or to tell me, when I enunciated them separately, which sound they themselves were making, or which of the two their classmates where making. So don’t be so quick to assume that you know how you sound to others.

1) if they write it, it’s not going to register because the letters don’t carry exactly the same sound in your mind that they do in the mind of the American writing that. IOW, if “a-b-o-u-t” doesn’t sound the same in your mind as theirs, neither will “a-b-o-o-t”, so the way you say “about” and the way you say “aboot” are different, therefore the accusation registers to you as false.

2) When they accuse you verbally (audibly), their attempt to immitate the Canadian vowel is probably inaccurate and exaggerated enough to register outside the range of what you perceive as “normal” pronunciation. To the American, the difference seems obvious, and their brain focuses on that difference and probably amplifies it. Then their untrained mouth tries to immitate what they heard and comes up with something that sounds wrong to you too.

There used to be a pretty good quiz on MySpace that could tell you which regional accent you have. I can’t remember if included Canada or not, but if you can find it, the questions will give you a good idea about how different regions can see certain pairs of sounds as distinct or indistinct from one another. It’s quite interesting. It will even give you a bar graph of which regional influences are strongest in your particular voice pattern…without ever hearing you speak.

You guys grew up saying it a certain way (basically your “o” is a lot more round than ours…but you also grew up watching American TV, so both sounds register as normal and interchangeable in your brain.

For those of you still in denial, ask yourself how it is that we know you’re Canadians just by your speech. For those of you who’ve never been identified as a Canadian by your speech, you are probably one of many whose pronunciation is closer to our standard media pronunciation than it is to say, Dave and Bob McKensie’s. But because you grew up hearing both, you yourself don’t even hear the difference. For us, it’s very obvious in those who use the “Canadian O”…but not all Canadians do. For example, I can’t tell which actors and actresses are Canadian…because they all speak American “Mid-Western Standard” (our equivalent to BBC Standard…the pronunciation used by news anchors.)