Talk:Canadian English/Archive 5

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Archive 5

Addition?

Not confident to add things myself, but I've heard that the term "Shit Disturber" is not used in the states, but I know it is very common in BC. It means someone who stirs up trouble (often for the fun of it). -- 206.108.31.34 (talk) 22:01, 13 October 2010 (UTC)

That's true, I've asked quite a few of my yank friends about that. Americans call it a "shit stirrer." Celynn (talk) 08:00, 5 February 2012 (UTC)

Check in the Dictionary of Canaidianisms to see what is said there (www.dchp.ca/dchp2). If not there, don't include here but write to the editors of that dictionary to keep an eye out for it. We should not include hear-say or ad hoc data here. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.69.177.182 (talk • contribs) 06:09, January 27, 2018(UTC)

That's certainly not the only valid source we can use to determine if a term is a Canadianism. Meters (talk) 21:51, 27 January 2018 (UTC)

It's the best source, by a long shot. Like I said, write to the editors if not in there. It's like using the OED - where else would you go? There are so many nonsense lists of Canadian English out there, that I highly recommend this route of action 24.69.177.182 (talk) 15:02, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

You didn't simply say that it was the best source. You stated that it should be the only source used, and I disagreed. Yes, it's a good source, but it is certainly not the only reliable source for what is a Canadianism. Your opinion does not have any bearing on what reliable sources we may use in Wikipedia, and your exhortation to report new Canadianisms to the DCHP has no place here. Talk pages are for discussing improvements to the article Please read WP:NOTAFORUM, particularly WP:NOTADVOCATE. Meters (talk) 17:30, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

Percentage of English speakers outside Quebec

"82% of Canadians outside Quebec speak English natively, but within Quebec the figure drops to just 11% as most are native speakers of Canadian French."

I am doubtful of this claim. I would think the percentage is much higher than 82% (on par with Australia, the US, UK, etc, in the 90s). 173.180.193.139 (talk) 20:36, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I suspect it's counting anglophones out of the total population including allophones. That makes the number a little skewed relative to intuition since almost all allophones are part of the anglophone or francophone communities (or both). (For the 1991 census, the figure would be 80% of the total non-Quebec population but 94% if allophones are excluded.) Peter Grey (talk) 23:03, 28 October 2011 (UTC)

I have corrected the figures in the lede, based on the StatsCan charts. Either some bad math was performed, the chart stats have changed (I doubt that much), or the charts were not interpolated correctly. The figures, as stated in the article needed to include the multi-language English also mother tongue count totals and didn't appear to. Also, a dead link was replaced as SatsCan have changed their website pages.

Also to note is the mixing of the terms "mother tongue", "native language", and "language spoken ". They are not interchangeable in some contexts. 99.251.169.186 (talk) 00:52, 2 June 2012 (UTC) Striking comments by block evading IP sock. Their edits have been reverted and others can then make the edits if they are deemed worthy, but be careful not to act as meatpuppets. This editor should not be supported. -- Brangifer (talk) 06:43, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

It doesn't seem off with the other figures given. French also has a presence in Ontario, where only 70% think of English as their native language. --2001:16B8:31EF:7900:1DA4:B01D:5ABA:D676 (talk) 11:56, 16 December 2020 (UTC)

Fact: The Use of IPA Renders Most of This Article Incomprehensible to the Layperson

Many defend IPA phonetic symbols as the only precise way to convey pronunciation over a written medium. That may well be true, but should we consider educating people "precisely" to be more important than educating them at all? Because that's the real dilemma facing Wikipedia's dogged insistence on the use of IPA: For the vast, vast majority of readers, the IPA is—both literally and figuratively—Greek to them. It is a completely opaque wall of arcane squiggles that brings learning to a screeching halt.

If I sound a wee bit frustrated, it's because I am: I've made this argument time and time and time again, and I'm pretty sure I'm on the right side of it. Wikipedia is supposed to be "for the people". Therefore, an education in linguistics and the knowledge of a complex phonetic alphabet should not be necessary to, say, casually look up the differences between American and Canadian English.

"Rhymes with..." examples, though slightly less precise than the IPA, are far more accessible—and, since the IPA is defined on this very site by the use of such rhyming examples, it strikes me as a little silly to say they're inadequate.

Why not simply skip the middle man and put the rhyming words in the article body, instead of requiring readers to painstakingly cross-reference every single symbol against the IPA page? Eunomiac (talk) 00:39, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Actually, IPA is pretty widely taught outside North America, so a reader from, say, Romania, might already be familiar with most of the symbols. Even within North America, IPA is taught in, for example, introductory linguistics courses (and if you're interested in reading an article on Canadian English, you may well have some interest in linguistics...). The IPA learning curve isn't particularly steep; it's just that American dictionaries don't use it, so we're used to thinking of IPA as more exotic and off-putting than it really is. However, using both together—as the article seems to do now—seems a great compromise. Q·L·1968 ☿ 18:17, 6 March 2014 (UTC)

The fact that understanding an article requires being "taught" a new (and unnecessary, at least in this context) skill is itself the problem. Certainly, readers who have had the benefit of an education in the arcane second language of IPA will have no difficulty understanding it... but they'd also have no problem understanding a simpler, if slightly less precise, description based on "sounds like" rhymes. (And to anyone who wishes to dwell on the weaker precision of illustrative rhymes, I can only point to the fact that the IPA resources available on Wikipedia themselves use rhymes to illustrate the meaning of each syllable --- so really, I'm just advocating that we cut out the middleman.

It really is a straight, flat fact that articles like this, with their zealous insistence on IPA, are utterly useless to the vast majority of people who read them.Eunomiac (talk) 04:23, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

The problem with using "rhymes with" as a pronunciation guide in an encyclopedia in lieu of IPA is that the rhyming word isn't necessarily pronounced the same way by everybody either. My go-to example is that I once got into a forum discussion with a woman who had been thoroughly disgusted by overhearing somebody mispronounce "llama" — and the way she communicated how it's supposed to be pronounced is that it was supposed to rhyme with "drama". It was impossible for me to figure out what pronunciation she was defending as right and what pronunciation had given her the heaves, however, because both of the possible pronunciations of "llama" rhyme with possible pronunciations of "drama" — they can both be pronounced either "amma" as in rama lama ding dong, or "ahma" as in Dalai Lama. In a nutshell, "rhymes with" did absolutely nothing to communicate what she was trying to say. And by the same token, if something rhymes with "car", what pronunciation of car? Bostonian "pahk the cah in Hahvahd Yahd", Newfoundlandish "cair", British/Irish "Jimmy Carr"? Or if it rhymes with "house", do we mean "howse", "hoose" or "hice", all of which are ways that word gets pronounced in different dialects? Bearcat (talk) 23:18, 26 September 2018 (UTC)

I would suggest that the mere existence of this discussion is proof that Wikipedia should use both. IPA is the only option for an accurate representation but it is a little skewed towards a more technical audience. Peter Grey (talk) 22:03, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Peter Grey: that skew "towards a more technical audience" is true only in the Anglosphere. Outside of it, IPA is taught widely. Here in Japan, junior high school kids learn it as part of their English classes. English is the most broadly spoken second language in the world, and a significant proportion of our readers are not native speakers—and come from cultures that teach IPA in school. Curly "JFC" Turkey 🍁 ¡gobble! 22:36, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 16:38, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Pronunciation examples to make the phonetics intelligible to the layperson?

In the "Phonemic incidence" section, the phonetic pronunciation symbols mean nothing to those who are not specialists in the field. Perhaps more "rhymes with" examples could be provided to make the article accessible to a wider audience. Tetsuo (talk) 18:02, 2 February 2013 (UTC)

I've added some rhymes and homophones to make understanding for the non-linguist easier. I should note that these are indeed approximations, as the words I have given could be pronounced differently by different people. They are mostly for reference purposes. They may be edited as necessary, or completely removed if deemed inappropriate or unnecessary. Matty1487 (talk) 04:41, 24 March 2013 (UTC)

The problem with "rhymes" with, is that different regions have different pronunciations, there is not one single "American" accent, for example, as each region in the country has it's own flavor. Listen to a Bostonian say "Park the Car", and then listen to a New Yorker, or a Midwesterner. They do not pronounce words the same. The only "Standard" pronunciation in the US is what "Newscasters" use ("General American"). In the UK, there is "BBC News Standard English", in Canada it's "CBC accent". These are the "standards" for broadcast so that people all across the country, with a wide spectrum of "dialects" and "accents", can be universally understood. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Notwillywanka (talk • contribs) 01:20, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Except the IPA resources on Wikipedia use rhymes to illustrate the meaning of each syllable. So why not cut out the middleman, and use rhymes from the get-go instead of demanding readers treat the IPA page like a decoder ring to figure out what each symbol rhymes with?Eunomiac (talk) 04:25, 17 June 2018 (UTC)

Dictionaries section

I'm rewriting this. It was the subject of extensive COI editing by members of the DCHP project, and needs quite a bit of attention. Meters (talk) 06:13, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Done. Quite a bit of excessive DCHP material was pruned. See [1] in case anyone thinks some of it should be restored. I'll look at the DHCP and DCHP-2 articles in the next few days too. They need a some attention, and possibly some of the material removed here can find a home in those articles. Meters (talk) 06:52, 11 June 2018 (UTC)

Apparent contradiction

This paragraph, under “Informal Speech”, contains an apparent contradiction, asserting both Canadian uniqueness and usage in Australia and NZ for the same formulation: The only usage of eh exclusive to Canada, according to the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, is for "ascertaining the comprehension, continued interest, agreement, etc., of the person or persons addressed" as in, "It's four kilometres away, eh, so I have to go by bike." In that case, eh? is used to confirm the attention of the listener and to invite a supportive noise such as mm or oh or okay. This usage is also common in Queensland, Australia and New Zealand. I don’t have the COD, so can’t resolve this, but since this is effectively a citation for uniqueness, should the reference to Oz and NZ be deleted? MapReader (talk) 21:56, 13 December 2020 (UTC)

"but within Quebec the figure was just 7.5% as most of its residents are native speakers of Quebec French"

This statement is biased. It makes it seem like it were a shocking statement that so few people have English as their native language. French is the ONLY official language of Quebec, so not being native speakers of English is the norm. --2001:16B8:31EF:7900:1DA4:B01D:5ABA:D676 (talk) 11:58, 16 December 2020 (UTC)