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I know this does not apply to everyone but it seemed a good place to post it. There's a group at McGill University doing a survey on English word usage in Canada. All you have to do is email them at canadian_english@mcgill.ca and ask for a survey to be sent to you by mail, and they will gladly send you as many copies as you ask for. I know there are a few other Canadians on Board (belMarduk, boronia, modestgoddess) and I thought this would be the easiest way to get the word out. I've already done the survey myself and it was fun. There isn't much info on the McGill website but I originally heard about it on CBC Radio. Anyway, all I can find at McGill is the prof's short information page: http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/linguistics/dept/faculty.html#cboberg and a short, technical description of the project: http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/linguistics/dept/projects.html#cb2-2005But I thought this group might have a higher-than-normal interest in completing such a survey.
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Thanks Bean! Sounds like fun. I've sent for my copy
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Wow, when did you move north of the border? I'm seriously thinking of doing the same thing... 
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thinking of doing the same
Yeah. You don't know what it's like, listening to her constant complaining about how it isn't cold enough or there's just so little snow.
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it isn't cold enough or there's just so little snow.Not that we-all wouldn't love to have youse join us up here, but if these are the only problems, perhaps we could somehow arranged to have some of the snow and cold sent down your way...? No, really! Take my cold and snow....Please! 
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Thanks, mg. Faldage was born with congenital tongue-in-cheek syndrome. We've had over 60 inches of snow so far. Is it true they grow bananas in Vancouver?
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arranged to have some of the snow and cold sent down your way
Y'all seem to have been doing perty good in that department so far. NOAA says we gone have a warmer and drier than usual Jan-Mar thanks to our friendly little boy in the Pacific.
Hah!
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Bean, thanks for this. I've emailed for about half-a-dozen copies of the survey, if they care to send that many....I looked at the description, but, and it seemed to be more to do with pronunciation by first-year students from across Canada? with particular note taken of how they pronounce vowels? How does a survey, filled out by people across the country, help out with this, I wonder? Anyway, lookin' fwd to gettin' my copy/ies!
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in VA tonight: 7 degrees F
That's about up where our high's been lately.
I put stop and waste valves on the pipes going to the shower (a perennial freeze problem when it gets below about 5°F)
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in VA tonight: 7 degrees Fsounds tropical to me... we were at -20°F this morning... it's about -7°F right now... don't think it's been above zero here at my house for three days.
formerly known as etaoin...
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Better watch it, DubDub--you'll have all the Vermonterites comin' after ya fer callin' their home state Hell!  Augh, I am absolutely green with envy! I wanna move up North!! (But I'd have to leave my family behind; but maybe not my son if I move to Alaska.) 60" of snow! Minus degrees! WAIL!!!!! You lucky DOGS!
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erm, would somebody please take Jackie's temperature? actually, it's supposed to get above zero tomorrow. but only for a little while...
formerly known as etaoin...
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stranger
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Is it true they grow bananas in Vancouver?
As far as I know, they don't grow any here, no. But I did hear a few days ago that we might not have any bananas in ten years or so. Not sure why, since I only quickly skimmed the article before leaving to go out somewhere.
"Did you eat another dictionary?" -- what an online friend said to me once
"Did you eat another dictionary?" -- what an online friend said to me once
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I think the link was about the broader scope of the project. But Buddy-who-is-conducting-the-survey was interviewed on CBC and was asking for anyone interested in doing the word-usage part of the survey to contact him. Hence my post above. There does not yet seem to be a website specifically for the word-usage questionnaire.
And as for the bananas, Flam_X, I think it was something about a fungus which could kill them all, something like the famous potato blight in Ireland which wrecked every potato in Ireland (more or less) because they were all genetically the same.
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Dear Anna(Betsy)Strophic,
Here's the letter I received in reply to my request for the suvey:
Hi Ann,
Thanks for your e-mail.
We'd be happy to send you a copy of our survey, or several, if you know other people around your area who might enjoy filling them out. It's often fun to compare respones with family, friends, or co-workers. It would actually be extremely interesting for us to get some responses from the
New Hampshire area, so we could see how word usage differs across the international boundary. Just let us know how many surveys you'd like, and we'll get them in the mail right away.
So there you go! I am still in God's Country where the temperature has been hovering around zero fahrenheit for a week. A few windy days and it was about 15 below (wind chill) !!!! Poor Pearl (Bichon) is getting cabin fever!
Meawhile graka' jbdlwieuw, vbwkoluqyduyegf ,zbbkbbxz bdjkq is beginning to make sense to me!
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it was about 15 below (wind chill)
Our weather warmed up considerably this afternoon for the first time in several days, so I washed my car; it was really awful-looking, with dirt and salt sprayed all over it. My hands did get a little cold. When I finished and came indoors, I found out it was exactly freezing. No wonder some of the water droplets turned to ice before I could dry them... I have since been officially declared unable to function in normal society.
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In reply to:
And as for the bananas, Flam_X, I think it was something about a fungus which could kill them all, something like the famous potato blight in Ireland which wrecked every potato in Ireland (more or less) because they were all genetically the same.
How can bananas all be genetically the same when we've got something like 20 different kinds of banana in Indonesia alone?
Bingley
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20 different kinds of banana in Indonesia
I believe we're talking about Ugandan bananas here. There was an article about it on NPR news the other day. They mentioned that the bananas in question were seedless and propagated by, I believe, runners. They wanted to do some gene splicing with wild bananas but Ugandan law forbade them from bringing the wild bananas into the country.
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They mentioned that the bananas in question were seedless and propagated by, I believe, runners.
That marathon runners or just joggers? Sorry, I'm an apple that's got the pip, and besides, Juan misspelled my name.
- Pfranz
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20 different kinds of banana
I read that the domestic banana - the edible variety - is susceptible to the aforementioned fungus (black something-or-other). Wild bananas are naturally immune - but they also have honkin' big hard seeds that render them reproducible, but inedible. That's wot I read, anyway....
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honkin' big hard seeds
Dang it, whyn'tcha WARN somebody when yer gonna say somethin' like that? Somebody just might be trying to swallow some tea at the moment... [mopping keyboard]
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Jackie, YOU make ME larf out loud! (but I dislike the abbreviation LOL so I'se not gonna use it!) (love you, woman!)
So mebbe this means your nose is nice and clean inside now, after its tea enema....Or perhaps the only result was that now, all you can smell is tea...?!
I did the nose trick with grape juice once when I was small. It dyed the inside of my nose purple.
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In reply to:
20 different kinds of banana
I read that the domestic banana - the edible variety
I meant 20 different kinds of edible banana, though some need cooking first. I think pisang raja (king bananas) have er.. honkin' big hard seeds but I don't remember seeing any in other types.
Bingley
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You don't use honkin' to mean big? I thought that was more or less universal slang.
"Jaysus Murphy, that was a big honkin' truck that nearly smashed into us!!!!!!!"
EDIT: Or honkin' big. And truck was a bad example because they actually honk. How about "honkin' big steak"?
(or something like that)
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honkin' big hard seeds that render them reproducible, but inedible
Hey! Watermelons have honkin' big hard seeds. Doesn't stop folks from eating them.
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So do guanabanas. Never stopped me neiver.
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I consider unpleasant (or honkin' big) any seeds which are macroscopic and randomly hidden throughout the fruit. Therefore I tolerate apple seeds because I can avoid them (they're localized) but I hate watermelon, partly because of the flavour (I hate cucumber, too), and partly because of the seeds which appear just when you think you've successfully navigated (!) around them all!!!!!!
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Stick a watermelon seed in a banana and tell me whether it's honkin' big. And the honkin' big seeds in peaches and avocadoes ain't stopped nobody from eating *them, neither.
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Would this have anything to do with Canadian geese? And that's why we USns and others don't (yet) know the expression?
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USns and others don't (yet) know the expression?I use this all the time. (well, not all the time...…) 
formerly known as etaoin...
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Yeahbut® you don't count, eta. You're 'borderline.'
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Do you Canadian geese have to use honkin' + big together to indicate that something is very big or can honkin' solo by itself?
Also, is honkin' used with any word other than big?
I think it's a very funny word and I plan on using it today--if I can find a place--at the faculty lunch table just to see whether anybody notices. And I suppose the word developed in Canada because something that honks is loud. So, if something is big but in a big, big way, that something "honks" its bigness.
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'borderline.'
I don't really consider myself 'borderline,' but I wouldn't have even commented on the usage it seems so natural to me. I'm pretty sure I've heard it used in Arizona.
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Oh my gosh, I have laughed out loud, all the way down this thread, you-all! Honkin' Canadian geese! (Look out--Bean and mg might get their feathers ruffled, over that!) A-and, I notice you didn't specify that etaoin is borderline what! <eg> Oh oh OH, my stomach hurts!
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Sometimes I can't believe the nits we pick here! mg uses, in an offhand way, a little expression, two words long, and lo and behold! we find out that it's not well-understood everywhere. This is what I love about the Board - we discover that all these things we take for granted are not the same everywhere, and that's what makes life interesting. My Canadian Oxford says honking: also honkin' N. Amer. slang very large So apprently it's not strictly Canadian. HOWEVER In looking up honking I ran across hork spit, the act of spitting, according to the dictionary, with the additional qualifier added by me that it usually refers to the type of spitting preceded by the sound "hork" which is marked as Canadian slang. Well, that's another one I thought everyone knew. Live and learn. Edit: For WordWind: I was going to add that yes, things can only be honkin' big, not honkin' small or honkin' smelly or anything else...[\red]
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Honkin' is surely an expression that had its origins in Detroit ... ?
- Pfranz
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Honkin' big is not an expression I use much myself (in fact I think my post above when I was more or less just quoting mg was probably a first), but I've certainly heard it before and know what it means. In reply to:
In looking up honking I ran across hork spit, the act of spitting, according to the dictionary, with the additional qualifier added by me that it usually refers to the type of spitting preceded by the sound "hork" which is marked as Canadian slang. Well, that's another one I thought everyone knew. Live and learn.
Surely this is just a Canadian mis-spelling of hawk? For any who may not be familiar with the expression, hawking up is a major expectoration preceded by much throat-clearing and coughing.
Bingley
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Surely this is just a Canadian mis-spelling of hawk?Presume not such a thing! Misspellers not we are! Onomatopoeists are we. Hence honkin', methinks.... Actually my Canajun Oxford, eh? sez "hork" is an alteration of "hawk." Not a misspleling. Plese. We nevir mispel anythink. We ar a nation of very literut peopl. Dunno that I envisioned quite how honkin' big them banana seeds are....I wonder how they do compare with watermelon seeds? I wonder how the wild banana compares, for size, with the tame banana? While I'm at it, I wouldn't have said an avocado had a honkin' big seed. I would have said it had a honkin' big pit. But that's a whole nother discussion, prolly.... And finally I feel compelled to add, because of Bean's example of the honkin' big truck, that I actually used that phrase once and had to elaborate....I rang up the police station to report someone who had passed me dangerously (I get quite righteous about dangerous driving), and I said, "This honkin' big truck passed me on a solid line....Okay, it wasn't actually honking...." The policewoman laughed and said she knew what I meant, a friend of hers uses that expression all the time...!
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Somehow great seems to go better with honkin than big does. As in "He gives a honkin great hork every morning. Sounds like he's bringing half his windpipe up."
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Bingley, you're right - for your bit o' the world! Canajuns seem to use "big" rather than "great" for a size adjective.
I just remember my British-born-and-raised father saying things like, "This ruddy great truck passed me on the highway," etc....
I heard someone with a British accent talking about how the 12th century English kings used to go "hawking" and I now quite unnerstan' why Canajuns corrupted it to "horking"...!
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But.... but ... to the non-rhotically inclined among us, hawking and horking sound the same.
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hawking and horking sound the sameShorely the vowel is a tad longer in the former? rhoticism or not?! (I had to look up "rhotic" btw....) but yer right, I guess. Damn. I think I'm falling in love....
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"Shorely the vowel is a tad longer in the former?"
Mais non! I was married to an Australian in my former life and you honest-to-god couldn't tell whether he was saying "porn" or "pawn". He and one of his fellow nationals were once talking about a small town near Adelaide(his home) and I thought for all the world the name of the place was Gorla. Until I saw a map one day and saw the town Gawler. Oh how they laughed, those people of dubious parentage, when I told them what I thought. "So OK," sez I,"how would you pronounce something spelled g-o-r-l-a?" and they both said "Gawler." Foreigners talk funny. I know this because I was one the whole year I lived in Australia and people always stared when I spoke out loud.
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Edit: For WordWind: I was going to add that yes, things can only be honkin' big, not honkin' small or honkin' smelly or anything else...
__________________________________
well, in a Britslang moment, I'd have to say it would in any case be impossible for something to be honking smelly as 'honking' means smelly.
As in, I think that cheese may have gone off.... oooh, yes, it's absolutely honking.
Frequently also applied to feet.
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I often use raunchy as slang for "bad smelling". raunch would be the noun form.
eg. "What IS that raunch? It's making my stomach turn!"
eg. "Now THAT is a raunchy smell."
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'honking' means smelly.
And so does "humming," as I recall from dating a Brit feller while backpacking in Oz....(he came out of the loo in our room in Brisbane - the only hostel room we ever had that was ensuite, I think - and said, "O, don't go in there - it's humming!") (I love that man, how he made me laugh!)
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"Raunchy", where I come from, usually means something sexually suggestive, a bit grubby ... I suppose you could get to "smells off" or "smells bad" from there!
- Pfranz
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I'd understand humming to mean filled with really good vibes. Or either going along just swimmingly.
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"Raunchy", where I come from, usually means something sexually suggestive, a bit grubby
It certainly has this as its more common meaning but I learned it as "smelly" in high school. It might have been a bit of local slang which then dispersed when we all left.
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hawking and horking sound the same
I felt some embarrassment when, on asking an American colleague one time, “What bird’s that?” he replied, “That’s a hock.” Normally I’m pretty quick with these differences, but I had already identified it as a hawk and was waiting for him to tell me what kind – him bein’ a huntin’ type an’ all. So, what is he telling me? I thought, and was trying to recall a type of hawk that was called a hock. Decided I must’ve misheard. I *knew it wasn’t a bottle of overly sweet white wine! Of course, I had asked too broad a question for the answer I wanted and he had to repeat himself three times before I caught on.
As a non-rhotic speaker I pronounce hawk and cork alike and, for that matter, caulk. My colleague would pronounce ‘cork’ almost as I would, non-rhotic certainly, but perhaps with an almost unnoticeable diphthong (but not an intrusive ‘r’). His hawk, however, was ‘hock’. Does this suggest an origin on the east coast perhaps? He was living in California at that time but I don’t know his home state.
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but not an intrusive ‘r’Intrusive!? Intrusive!? It belongs there! It's not intrusive!  The 'r' at the end of California is intrusive!
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You're right. Intrusive was not correct, and is not what I meant. Mental muddle. Mea culpa.
The 'r' is there, has every right to be there, and whether you acknowledge its presence or not comes down to early training.
Point I was trying to get at was whether these were linguistic clues to where this guy came from?[rising inflection]
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His hawk, however, was ‘hock’. Does this suggest an origin on the east coast perhaps? Hi, Sweet Thing--no. Some East Coast-ers get weird with their r's, as in hahbah for harbor and Porscher for Porsche. But we normal US'n's and even those ones pretty much say hawk for hawk. Though I'm not saying that nobody says hock for hawk, hock is a different word and I would hope people would make sure they distinguish the sounds of the two (yes, I am an optimist). The vowel sound of hawk is the same as in jaw, law, paw, etc. And although I believe ought really ought to have a slightly different vowel sound, around these parts it's the same: hawk, ought.
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Yes, hock for hawk is a regionalism, but I'm not entirely sure wherefrom. I'm kind of hearing it being said by a Chicagoan (of which I was/am one of {you can take the boy out of Chicago…}) so maybe it's a mid-western thang. I think I can hear it from a Wisconsonian or a Minnesotan. musick? tsuwm?
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If any of us owned the Dictionary of American Regional English, we could LIU: http://polyglot.lss.wisc.edu/dare/dare.htmlVol. IV just out!
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Didn't someone post a link to a site that has such like? I remember soda/pop/tonic/cocola. That's word choice but didn't it have pronunciations, too?
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I think I've mentioned this before but anyway..in "typical" Canadian English the vowels in hock and hawk have merged, that is, they are pronounced the same. So Canadians (on average, and including myself) see the following word pairs as homophones:
hock/hawk
don/dawn (this can be awkward since Don is a man's name and Dawn is a woman's name)
tot/taught
cot/caught
awful/offal
cod/cawed
I think this may be the case for some parts of the US - I remember looking at some vowel map at the American Dialect Society - but I can't remember the details anymore. Anyway, hock/hawk sounds perfectly normal to my ears but I can see the source of confusion.
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honk, honkerWhen I was a kid, and through high school (Central New Jersey, NYC area), we always used to say for spitting "honk up a good one" or "what a honker" or "that's a big honker". And "honkey" was a disparagement for white folks. raunchyAnother favorite high school expression was "man, that's raunchy!" for something that's smelly or nasty in any repulsive way. "Get that raunchy thing away from me!" bananasIt was recently in the news that bananas have a good chance of disappearing within 10 years as they are genetically unable to fend off disease...unless one of our bio-geneticist maestros saves the day and saves our bananas (I love bananas!) he mispelled my nameP franz, okay?  Candian geeseUh, ladies...that's Canad a geese.
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Boston accent(hi, wow!) For some reason folks with a stong Boston>New England accent (see the kennedys) change any word with a final syllable of "-a" to "-er"...as in Americer, Canader, staminer, etc. I had a German teacher for three years in high school who was from Boston and who spoke English with a heavy Boston accent...talk about trying to decipher that twist of accenting!
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Bean, why do Canadians pronounce about "aboot"? (or mebbe you wanna ask why USns pronounce aboot "about"? )
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this whole tot/taught, cot/caught thang is a giant yart. just to chop some liver.
formerly known as etaoin...
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just to chop some liverHawk liver!?  ...I'd rather eat ham hocks!
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Oh, but giant yarts are allowed on Mondays!
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giant yarts are allowed on Mondays!
Where a giant yart is defined as one that will sleep 20 or more,
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OK, you YARTophobes, the bit about "where in the US have these vowels merged" is still unanswered, and I'm not in the mood to look for it. Instead of making fun of me you could get your Googlers out and get working! I was just pointing out a possibility, and slightly miffed that Jackie insinuated that those of us who don't differentiate between those vowels are pronouncing things improperly. [pout] I say, when a whole group of people pronounces things a particular way, then it is the right way for them! I will never be able to casually make my mouth all pointy the way you need to to pronounce awful, hawk, dawn, etc., with different vowels than the others!
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Where a giant yart is defined as one that will sleep 20 or more,Oh, you mean like Michael Jackson's bedroom?
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Michael Jackson's bedroom
Does it float?
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Bean, the about/aboot was a serious question...really.
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Michael Jackson's bedroom
Does it float?It can do anything Michael says it does. 
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That forwarding/shortening of the vowel sound is also common in tidewater Virginia -- in fact you'll hear it all along the mid-Atlantic Coast. I wonder if there's any connection.
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It's called raising because your tongue is actually in a higher place in your mouth when making that vowel. However, the "rule" for raising is different in Canada than those parts of the US where it's found. We raise the vowels before an unvoiced consonant, and leave the sound "low" before a voiced consonant. I think in Virginia it's applied to all instances of one of the diphthongs (can't remember if it's ai or au) whether voiced or unvoiced. The info is in my linguistics book at home, and I am, of course, at school...
I don't think they [the linguists] have generally concluded just why it arose. Certainly Canadians of Scottish descent seem to raise more strongly than others. And many of the first English-speaking Canadians came from Scotland. But we all* seem to do it.
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Here's a link about it, but the bloody sound thingies don't work for some reason. And sound files would be most useful in this case! http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/CanadianEnglish.html
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"Bean, the about/aboot was a serious question...really."
Aieeee! It's NOT "aboot"! It's ABOAT. Maybe I should let a Canajan answer that question, but it drives me nutz when people can't tell the difference. It was one of the first things I noticed when I moved to Ontario in 1978, and when I mentioned it to my friends, who were all language students, they all said, "Oh, no, we don't soand like that!"
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If it were aboot, then we would be able to rhyme words like "about" and "flute". Well, we don't. They don't rhyme. I like to spell the -out sound something like uh-oo (as opposed to USn and Brit ah-oo), where "uh" is the schwa sound. The whole vowel ends up shorter with the Canadian Raised diphthong. One of my favourite demo pairs of words is lout/loud. Loud ends up so much longer than lout. They are so similar but different because we only make this vowel change before an unvoiced consonant (see above).
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But innyway, I'm a midwesterner, and I say "hock" and "hawk" the same. Ditto "all" and "awl".
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Yes, thinking back now, the sound is actually much closer to aBOAT than to aBOOT.
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Thanks, Bean! (and birdfeed) Guess I was sort of on the right track, but that and a dollar will get me a bad cup of coffee.
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insinuated that those of us who don't differentiate between those vowels are pronouncing things improperly As to this, I'm just a stick(ler) in the mud. But as to lout/loud. Loud ends up so much longer than lout. , well, y'all people are just weird! Eep--I just tried it, and be danged if loud isn't just a little bit longer! Oops! Aside: isn't it neat, that your thread that seemed to start out as being relevant to just a few, has transmogrified and grown the way it has?
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From the most recent two issues of Michael Quinion's newsletter: 15 Feb: Subscribers who are native speakers of North American English are likely to find the Dialect Survey of interest. This was created by Professor Bert Vaux at Harvard University. You can take a test and view the collected results, which include maps. See where people say the vowel in "cot" and "caught" the same way, where they use double models as in "I might could do that", where they consider "anymore" to be a standard form meaning "nowadays", or any of 120 other variations. See: http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~golder/dialect/22 February: A number of Canadian subscribers attempted to register at the dialect site I listed last week, which describes itself on its home page as "designed for speakers of North American English", but found to their surprise and disgruntlement on trying to take the test that they were not considered to be North American. Not being in that category, I didn't try the test, so didn't discover the error. I did assume, though, that a linguistic site would know what it meant when it wrote "North American English"! Bingley
Bingley
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didn't discover the error.
From the site:
speakers of all varieties of English are welcome to take the test.
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That's really bush league (no pun intended). The one and only serious, scholarly and comprehensive dialect survey was started by the late Frederic Cassidy and is being continued by the qualified folks at the University of Wisconsin. Aside from the absurdities cited above, from what I've seen of this, the questions are leading and presuppose the respondents can actually *hear themselves; also there don't seem to be any qualifications (long-term residency, at least) established for the informants. And what's a 'double model?'
Thanks for bringing it to our attention, Bingley!
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There's a group at McGill University doing a survey on English word usage in Canada. All you have to do is email them at canadian_english@mcgill.ca
At the bottom of the form I received it notes the survey may be returned to : Prof Charles Berg, Dept of Linguistics, McGill University, 1085 Dr. Penfield, Montreal, QC, H3A 1A7 Canada -- Tel (514) 398-4896 -- FAX : (514) 398-7088 -- E-Mail : charles.boberg@mcgill.ca
I took it, so did a couple of my neighbors, my son and the young gal who comes in to help around the house. Some interesting differences and similarities! Age range from early 20s to me in 70s!
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And what's a 'double model?
Aha! Found it. It's not "model", it's "modal"! Like could, would, ought to, etc.
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It's not "model", it's "modal"!
Lost in the Chasm of Sar without a paddle.
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Sorry, I'm 17 days late, I didn't think there was so much fun going on up 'ere in I+A.
I pronounce hock and hawk differently. I can't say I recall ever hearing them blur together, 'cept maybe in Boston... which would explain why the 'stereotypical' south side Chicago accent may also blur thier distinction.
Hock - Exchange goods for money at a "pawn shop".
Hocker - Is organic and it comes from your throat after you say the word "hocker" a few times...
Hawk - Is the guy who does the White 'Sox' (pronounced like 'hocks') color commentary.
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