How we spent our Canadian vacation

[Beverly Flanigan]

We have "Canadian" raising all through Minnesota, with the /au/ as in
"about"--> 'aboot' stronger the farther north you go but the /ay/ as in
"right/night" rhyming with "kite" common throughout the state (and in me).


>NW of Toronto we immediately started hearing the "Canadian raising", in
>particular the raised nucleus of /au/ (Do I have that right?).  On
>Manitoulin we heard and saw "camp" for cabin.  However, we did not hear the
>Canadian "eh" until Sault Ste Marie.  That included ferry passengers, motel
>clerks, gas station attendants, waitresses, fellow diners, and librarians.
>But West of there it was ubiquitous.  In a cafe in Marathon our fellow
>diners were straight out of The Great White North, but the waitress was,
>indeed, straight out of Fargo.  That was pretty much the high point.  West
>of there the flavor that we had come to think of as Canadian was gradually
>replaced by tones that were more familiar to our ears.  By Thunder Bay the
>only thing left was "eh".  (Tip to motorists: avoid motels with large
>parking lots; they will be full of idling trucks by morning.)
>
>At 11:11 PM 8/11/2002 -0400, Don wrote:
> ><amateur opinion/impression>
> >
> >All exaggeration aside, the characters in "Fargo" sound like nothing
> >in small-town Minnesota I've ever heard (stops at gas stations, telephone
> >calls--admittedly not extensive contact) as much as they do Southern
> >Manitoba Mennonites (six years in Winnipeg, I'm a Russian Mennonite
> >myself, though from Southern Ontario).  My take on the movie was
> >that basing it in Minnesota made it caricature, but had the action been
> >shifted a hundred miles north across the border it would have been
> >very realistic.
>
>
>   Tom Kysilko        Practical Data Services
>   pds at visi.com       Saint Paul MN USA