Bilin­gual Stop Sign in Ottawa

Wel­come to my new series, the “Cana­dian List of Ten”! Ten weeks, ten posts, ten lists and one hun­dred new Cana­dian things for you, from food to lan­guage, from city to weather.

Con­trary to pop­u­lar belief, Cana­di­ans don’t speak Cana­dian. Most speak Eng­lish, or French, or even both.

Over­all, Cana­dian Eng­lish is quite straight­for­ward. There are local accents (for exam­ple in New Brunswick) but over­all, the Eng­lish Cana­di­ans speak is very close to Amer­i­can Eng­lish. In writ­ing, Cana­dian Eng­lish does use some UK Eng­lish spelling (which I can never seem to remem­ber, like “color” vs. “colour”) and you may hear some UK Eng­lish expres­sions that are not pop­u­lar in the USA.

But Cana­dian Eng­lish also has words or expres­sions not found, or not widely used, in other vari­ants of Eng­lish. Do you know these ten?

1. Toonie/ loonie: The “toonie” is the Cana­dian two dol­lars coin (the one with a polar bear on it). The “loonie” is the gold-colored one dol­lars coin which bears images of a com­mon loon, a well-known Cana­dian bird. And like in the USA, the ten cents coin is called “a dime”.
2. Pop: in Canada, soft drinks are often referred to as “pop”.
3. Double-double: when hav­ing your cof­fee fix at Tim Hor­tons, you may hear peo­ple ask­ing for a “double-double”. It means they want their cof­fee served with two cream and two sug­ars (maybe to make it drink­able… let’s face it, Tim Hor­tons cof­fee is only extremely hot brown-colored water after all!).
4. Dépan­neur: this one puz­zled me for a long time. A “dépan­neur” in France is a repair­man or a mecanic. “Dépan­ner” some­one means to “help some­one”. So when I heard “we need to go to the dépan­neur”, I auto­mat­i­cally assume it was some kind of break­down mechanic. But in Québec, a “dépan­neur” is actu­ally a con­ve­nience store! Anglo­phones in Québec and in some parts of Ontario use the word “dépan­neur” as well.
5. Hydro: in Canada, an “hydro bill” doesn’t refer to water but to elec­tric­ity. This is prob­a­bly because most of the power is sup­plied through hydroelectricity.
6. New­fie jokes: French make fun of Bel­gians, Cana­di­ans make fun of New­found­lan­ders. “What do you call a New­fie sit­ting in a tree wear­ing a suit? A branch man­ager”.
7. The states, down south, our south­ern neigh­bors: obvi­ously, the U.S.A. Hate them, love them, we can’t ignore Uncle Sam. The U.S.A are Canada’s largest trad­ing part­ner and a lot of Amer­i­can cul­ture is exported in Canada. Plus, we like to visit them, espe­cially when the Cana­dian dol­lar is high.
   
8. Interac: this is usu­ally a syn­onym to “debit card”. Interac is the net­work through which are done finan­cial trans­ac­tions. For exam­ple, if you buy some­thing in a store, you may pay with cash, a credit card or “interac” (your debit card, with fund directly with­drawn from your check­ing account).
9. Anglophone/ fran­coph­one: A per­son with Eng­lish as the first lan­guage is called an Anglo­phone. The cor­re­spond­ing term for a French speaker is Fran­coph­one. These expres­sions are mostly used in Québec and some parts of Ontario where peo­ple could be either French or Eng­lish speakers.
10. Eh: imi­tat­ing Cana­di­ans is easy — just start say­ing “eh” after each word! In fact, Cana­dian don’t use it that much. “Eh” shows con­tin­ued inter­ested: “it’s cold eh, I drove this morn­ing“. It can also be used to turn a sen­tence into a ques­tion: “fuck­ing cold, eh?“. Or even to show agree­ment: “I know, eh.”

Related arti­cles:

1. A Cana­dian Mind­set (8÷10)
2. Do You Speak Canadian…Eh?
3. Two Soli­tudes And One Loneliness
4. 10 Clues I Became Canadian
5. Four Years, Already…