I "OU"

Ken and I speak Canadian at home. You know how many immigrant families will learn the language of their new community, but often revert to their native tongue when they are at home? That’s us! (No, we don’t say, “eh?” all day long.) Because, obviously both Canada and the US are English speaking for the most part, notwithstanding Canada’s bilingualism, but what I mean is that we use words that are specific to Canada. Like at lunchtime, I might ask Ken if he’d like his sandwich on a roll, and he’ll say, “Its o.k. to speak Canadian.” And I’ll say, “Right! Do you want yours on a BUN?”  “Bun,” you see, is much more Canadian than “roll” which is so much more American. We learned this a long time ago on vacation – I mean “holiday” – in Oregon when a waitress laughed at us for asking for buns and gave us a look that I translated as “They sure are odd up there in the frozen north.”

If you ask, “Where’s the washroom?” in the US you’ll get a funny look. Ask for the “restroom” and save yourself the precious seconds you might need.

At home, we pronounce words the Canadian way, too.  Like, we pronounce scone, “scawn,” as in fawn instead of “scown” as in own. We say baa-zil, rather than bay-zil, which is what you’ll hear in American farm markets. And, because we learned French in school as all good Canadian kids do, we say “foy-yay” not “foy-yur” when referring to the front hall. And seriously, it’s “Iro-kwa,” not “Iro-kwoy” as I was surprised to hear for the first time when we moved to Buffalo. I try to say these words in the local dialect when out in public, but, as I say, at home we revert.

Or when I write emails to Canadian friends and family, I try to remember to use the “ou” Canadian form for words like honour, colour, and favour which even now, as I write this on our American version of Microsoft Word, is underlining these very words in red. “Glamour” apparently is the same in both languages.

As luck will have it, our address has a “z” in it. This creates the need for caution when spelling our street name, Schantz, aloud and the conscious effort to say “zee” instead of “zed.” But then as I once explained to an American friend, Canadians are adept at accepting Americanisms with grace and aplomb. My example is La-Z-Boy. In Canada this should technically be pronounced “La Zed Boy” not the contracted “Lay-zee-Boy” which is the accepted convention. But we Canadians like to play nice.  We call the store Lazy Boy, at least out in public.