some observations from north of the border

Laurence Horn laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Fri Sep 14 19:49:36 UTC 2012


From a recent trip to Halifax:

1) a variation on a snowclonish theme:

FRIENDS DON"T LET FRIENDS EAT PHARM [sic] SALMON

2) a regional delicacy, advertised in various pizza and snack shops:  DONAIR

My first mental "aha" moment led me to parse this as a French spelling of Döner, as in the Döner kebabs ubiquitous in Germany, but it turns out that the "donair" is a Haligonian (yes, that's the adjective) variation on that theme, given the ground meat/meatloaf versions, or so I gather from browsing google hits and the relevant (and impressively thorough) wiki-site after I got home, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doner_kebab.
(I didn't try any when I was there, since I spent all my Canadian fast food dollars on the extremely good fish and chips there.)

3) Canadian raising is very much alive and well.  (Although I didn't notice any utterance-final "eh"s.)

LH  
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