'It looks to me, based on these data, that Canadians feel that their relationship with the United States has changed in a fundamental way,' said an Ipsos leader.
I think “oot” emphasises the difference from US accents for parody reasons, and also it’s just not that simple to describe that difference by substituting a single letter of the alphabet. The best way I can think of to describe it (based on experience with friends from BC) is like a combination of “oht” and “oat”
I’m in the US and I have to support this analysis. I dated someone from Canada when I was younger, and at first he expressed the same thought as the poster above - he didn’t hear the difference, so he didn’t get it.
Until he came to visit me in the states. The difference between how his dad and my dad talked was so apparent, the stereotype just “clicked.” To say “aboot” is definitely an exaggeration, but in all fairness, it’s really hard to repeat a sound that isn’t in your native dialect. There is no US-English equivalent for the “ou” sound in Canadian English “about.”
It’s like when a Japanese speaker uses a Z sound instead of English TH - it’s not because Z is exactly what they hear when an English person says TH, but because the TH sound doesn’t exist in Japanese at all. In both cases (and so many more across the world), speakers substitute non-standard sounds with ones they already know.
I think “oot” emphasises the difference from US accents for parody reasons, and also it’s just not that simple to describe that difference by substituting a single letter of the alphabet. The best way I can think of to describe it (based on experience with friends from BC) is like a combination of “oht” and “oat”
I’m in the US and I have to support this analysis. I dated someone from Canada when I was younger, and at first he expressed the same thought as the poster above - he didn’t hear the difference, so he didn’t get it.
Until he came to visit me in the states. The difference between how his dad and my dad talked was so apparent, the stereotype just “clicked.” To say “aboot” is definitely an exaggeration, but in all fairness, it’s really hard to repeat a sound that isn’t in your native dialect. There is no US-English equivalent for the “ou” sound in Canadian English “about.”
It’s like when a Japanese speaker uses a Z sound instead of English TH - it’s not because Z is exactly what they hear when an English person says TH, but because the TH sound doesn’t exist in Japanese at all. In both cases (and so many more across the world), speakers substitute non-standard sounds with ones they already know.