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Mike Spencer Mike Spencer is offline
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Default what type of press is this?


"Jim Wilkins" writes:

"Mike Spencer" wrote in message

[I didn't write that; you did. :-]

Why do you think US and Canadian speech sounds almost identical yet so
different from British?


To the extent that's true, I'd assume the influence of the media.
Lots of US TV here in Canada, not so much from the UK. I haven't had
a TV for 40 years but I see it periodically over my dentist's chair.
Last time to the tooth wrangler, I realized US TV can be characterized
as "fat people yelling at each other". Unfair, I know, to programs
such as yoga classes but a fair first approximation?

But then...

Many up-scale folks in Toronto & Ottawa have inflections that sound to
people from other provinces as "kinda British". Rural people in Nova
Scotia didn't sound either Brit or Merkin 50 years ago, unique
Lunenburg (German influence) and Cape Breton (Scots and Gaelic)
pronounciation and usage. After moving here 50 years ago, I had to
learn that "C'mintha hice" was an invitation to enter. That's all
fading gradually away.

In 1980, I was on a bus filled with other blacksmiths proceeding from
Ironbridge to Hereford. A guy in the seat behind me -- a certified
Brit whose normal delivery was what I took to be UK upper-middle-class
urban -- was recounting a yarn to his seatmate in some particular
English regional dialect. It sounded exactly like the adults I knew
in (Leftpondian) New Hampshire 65 years ago.

--
Mike Spencer Nova Scotia, Canada