NEWS 魅影直播 THE STRATHY LANGUAGE UNIT AND CANADIAN ENGLISH STUDIES
[Please note that this page is an archive of blog posts from 2021. Some of the links to articles are no longer active.]
Vaccine
Date: Dec. 14, 2021 | Category: In the Media
And the is.... vaccine!
"Interest in the definition of this word was intense in the past year: lookups for vaccine increased 601% year-over-year from 2020. But interest in the word has been high since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic...The prominence of the word vaccine in our lives in this era becomes even more starkly clear when we compare 2021 to 2019, a period in which lookups for the word increased 1048%."
Yassify
Date: Dec. 13, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Did you struggle with any of ?
Canadian English befuddles Brit
Date: Dec. 6, 2021 | Category: In the Media
"When I moved from the U.K. to Canada back in 2019, I wasn鈥檛 too worried about potential language barriers on my new adventure... Within days, I was wishing for a pocket dictionary on Canadian slang and regularly searching words I had never heard before."
- (Narcity, Nov. 29, 2021)
You say 'AH-muh-kraan', I say 'OH-muh-kraan'
Date: Dec. 3, 2021 | Category: In the Media
"Among the many unknowns surrounding the new coronavirus variant called Omicron, named after the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet, one has stood out to many English speakers: How is it pronounced?"
- (New York Times, Nov. 30, 2021)
Words Matter
Date: Dec. 2, 2021 | Category: In the Media
CBC's given their offensive historical or cultural context has . How has your experience informed this issue?
NFT
Date: November 24, 2021 | Category: In the Media
And the Collins Dictionary Word of the Year 2021 is.... NFT!
The K-Wave
Date: November 11, 2021 | Category: In the Media
As Korean pop culture gains appeal around the world, so does the Korean language, and it's having an impact on Canadian English.
- (Ottawa Citizen, Nov. 10)
Vax
Date: November 1, 2021 | Category: In the Media
The year is starting to wind down (so soon?) which means it's word-of-the-year season! First up is - "vax".
Slang with Lilly Singh
Date: October 21, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Brush up on your Toronto slang with Lilly Singh.
International Pronouns Day
Date: October 20, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Learn more about personal pronouns and .
Turonno
Date: September 17, 2021 | Category: In the Media
The way you pronounce "Toronto" reveals something about who you are and where you are from - but what exactly? Carleton University student Caitlin Bergin is determined to find out. Read about her Toronto pronunciation study and take her survey .
Living with Ice
Date: August 31, 2021 | Category: News
Here are some additional terms from the online lexicon we are developing of words and quotations from Wolfe Island. (See "Stooking Grain" below!). It's been hot enough this summer to have many longing for winter, so here are some refreshingly chilly terms related to ice - specifically the ice that forms in the waters surrounding Wolfe Island during the wintertime.
ice boat, noun, a light boat mounted on runners and equipped with sails
"The ice boat went through about halfway across and never got back out. Yeah, so he may have saved our life, eh, by giving us his ice boat."
ice car, noun, an old car used on Wolfe Island for driving the ice
"Back then everybody had an old Model A kicking around or a Chev, and they weren't very heavy. They made good ice cars."
ice house, noun, a building for storing ice
"We never cut any of that ice. Later years they used to just cut it in the harbour here. We'd just put a slide right up into the ice house."
ice storm, noun, a specific storm that occurred in January, 1998 in Eastern Ontario
"That was the biggest catastrophe that ever happened that I can recall on Wolfe Island, the ice storm."
The Peppa Effect
Date: July 21, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Is your Canadian toddler picking up "rubbish" or putting on her "swimming costume"? If so, it could be the Peppa Effect.
- (The Guardian, July 19, 2021)
- (CTV News, Feb. 13, 2019)
Auto Pact
Date: July 20, 2021 | Category: In the Media
The word of the week is 'auto pact'! Learn more - and get your weekly dose of Canadianisms - at .
Stooking Grain
Date: July 13, 2021 | Category: News
An ongoing project at the unit has been the creation of a corpus of oral stories from Wolfe Island, Ontario. We are now putting together an online lexicon to showcase some of the words and quotations. Here are a few samples related to farming.
mow, noun, the area for hay storage in a barn
"Come haying time, and the fresh hay in the mow, the chickens would like to burrow into the mow, lay their eggs."
stook, verb, to arrange bales of hay for drying
"I did everything in the fields. The only thing I never did was stook grain."
farm kid, noun, a child living on a farm
"Well a lot of them were farm kids, and they were taken out of school when the crops were going in or harvest time, so they missed a lot of school."
Sneak Peak: ANTHEM
Date: June 13, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Get a sneak peak at the Canadian Language Museum's upcoming exhibition, ANTHEM: Expressions of Canadian Identity, .
From the exhibition team:
ANTHEM: Expressions of Canadian Identity invites artists with roots in Canada to interrogate the meaning of the anthem鈥檚 lyrics and their relation to national and individual identity, as well as reflect on the lands upon which they personally live, work, and learn. Through this exhibition, we welcome audiences to reflect upon the often dissonant nature of Canadian identity as both a product of colonialism and a sense of belonging for many. We hope that the artworks spur discussion about how you have come to be on this land, the importance of language, and what being 鈥淐anadian鈥 means to each of us.
Cayleigh Eccles, Jessica Lanziner, Megan Sue-Chue-Lam
Are you 'cheugy'?
Date: May 10, 2021 [Updated May 4, 2021] | Category: In the Media
Do you call Toronto's Rogers Centre the Skydome? If so, you just might be "cheugy". This TikTok-coined word has , and now a journalist at The Star has who is "cheugy" in Toronto.
Remembering Canada's Word Lady
Date: April 28, 2021 [Updated May 4, 2021] | Category: In the Media
We are very sad to learn of the passing of Canadian English expert and advocate Katherine Barber, founding editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary and Canada's beloved "Word Lady". You can enjoy some of Katherine's thoughtful and funny reflections on Canadian English , and read these obituaries from the and .
Slang with the Levys
Date: March 25, 2021 | Category: In the Media
Test your slang with favourite Canadians Dan and Eugene Levy.
Canadianisms in The Great Canadian Baking Show
Date: February 9, 2021 | Category: Guest Column
Author: Jet McCullough
[Editor's note: This is the final piece in our series: Canadian English in The Great Canadian Baking Show]
In the previous three pieces of our series, we explored the use of British vs. North American baking terminology in The Great Canadian Baking Show, as compared to The Great British Bake Off. Another way that the Canadian show distinguishes itself linguistically from its European antecedent is in the presence of Canadianisms, words that are, if not strictly Canadian, at least 鈥渄istinctively鈥 so (鈥淐anadianism,鈥 Oxford English Dictionary (OED)).
One such term is 鈥減outine,鈥 referring to the dish of French fries, gravy and cheese curds, a term which appears in season one, episode 4 (S1:E4), in contestant Sabrina鈥檚 鈥渟鈥檓ores and poutine doughnuts.鈥 The dish originated in Quebec, and the term as used here derives from Canadian French (鈥減outine,鈥 Canadian Oxford Dictionary (COD)). According to A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP-2), it originally would have 鈥渞eferred to any kind of pudding-like dish.鈥 There appears to be some disagreement about whether the word 鈥減outine鈥 derives from the French 鈥減ouding鈥 (pudding) or the English 鈥減udding鈥 (鈥減outine,鈥 OED), the latter origin being favoured by linguist Charles Boberg (鈥減outine,鈥 DCHP-2). In any case, the term is distinctively Canadian, and when used in Canadian English, it refers strictly to this dish of Qu茅b茅cois origin (DCHP-2).