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
------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
More information about the Ads-l
mailing list