Ah, Your Lovely Voices

I'm fascinated by accents. I savor the nuances in the way people speak, the pronunciations, the colloquialisms, the cadences. My friends will tell you that I tease them relentlessly--Rachel and Jeanie Bean from Back East with their nasal tones and accentuated consonants, Larissa with her drawn out and dozy Southern vowels, but really I'm charmed.

Canadians are equally charming to me. I'm new enough here not to be able to pair their accents with their region, but there's a heavy Scottish flavor in many of them that I'm dying to trace.

All of them have a lovely way of lengthening and rounding out their words--"Oohhhh, yaaaah, fur surrre." And rather than the ubiquitous American "huh?" they'll say, "sorry!" (which comes out at "sore-y") instead. Wonderful.

Upon my first visit to Canada, I arrived hoping to hear the stereotypical "aboot" instead of "about" and lots of "eh's" sprinkled at the ends of their sentences. To my surprise and delight (at least here in Alberta), it's actually "a-boat" that they say, and I hear many more "hey's" than "eh's".

At first the "hey's" reminded me of my teenage American students (girls, always) whose every sentence ended with "ya know?" as a way of gaining acceptance from their listeners. I was wrong about the Canadians, though. It's a by-product of their utter likeability, a courteousness woven in the culture, I now think, a way of connecting with you in conversation: "Oh, the health care system does take a bit of getting used to, hey?"

Perhaps it's just that I live in a small town in Canada, and what I'm experiencing is simply the more neighborliness of rural life. After all, I grew up in rural Missouri, and it was much the same--conversations were a chance for you to show graciousness. I'd like to think, though, that Canadian culture in general is what's reflected in their speech, for every time one of them says to me, "Oh, no worries!" or "Oh, right! Fur sure!" I feel a little more welcome here.