re: appreciation of irony
Well, Canadians are known for self-deprecating humour, and, in fact, humour of all kinds. Gotta have a sense of humour when you live in a country where the unit of currency is the loonie.
I'll run and look up "dialectic" and "dialectal" right away. But I was quoting from a comparative linguistics course I took back at university - when the mountains were cooling, don'tcha know. The professor taught us about dialectic continua, where village A and village B could understand each other, and B and C, and maybe A and C a bit, but A and E were mutually incomprehensible.
I wonder if the passing-over of nationalities of English that are neither American nor British has to do with a) status as world powers (Britain ruled the world at one time, the US seems to rule it now, can't think of another English-speaking nation that ever did the same) or b) aggression. Neither Canada nor Australia made war in order to become independent of Mother England - we just kinda moved out and got our own apartments. Maybe we're not interesting enough?
Okay, here's proof Canadian English is different. All you Canadians out there, let the non-Canucks guess this one. What's a toque, and how do you say it?
