I’ve heard that this is because Canadians tend to get angry when people assume they’re American, but I have to wonder if Americans wouldn’t be just as likely to get angry. People just had more available examples of Canadians getting angry because they would tend to assume American sounding accents meant American.
I haven’t seen any get angry at being mistaken for Americans. Just sorrowful.
I think it’s a polite presumption of ability, because Canadians are just like Australians from the anti-Earth on the opposite side of the sun, where it’s cold instead of hot. They also understand humour, not just humor. Canadians are Commonwealth, Americans aren’t.
New Zealanders are a closer equivalent to Canadians in my book: always mistaken for their more numerous neighbours. From now on in cases where I can’t be very sure, I’m assuming that North American English accents are Canadian and Antipodean English accents are New Zealander. While I’m at it, Germanic accents are Swedish, Scandinavian accents are Norwegian, and so on around the world.
Where do you live? I’ve been amazed as an Australian in London to be taken as a South African. WHAT. My South African friends have been just as amazed my accent could be taken as that.
(insert paragraph about accents, inferential distance, cladistics applied to accent analysis, spotting an accent in a language not your native one, etc)
Cambridge, MA right now, but I’m a native speaker of Hiberno-English. Given more than a few sentences it is usually easy for me to distinguish between South African and Australian/New Zealander. I’m not sure if I regard the three as a cluster but there is definitely some kind of similarity, at least to Irish and UK ears.
I’m not exposed to enough New Zealander to be sure of the distinction between it and Australian, and I think there’s significant overlap especially among careful/educated/urban/middle-class speakers.
For reference I can distinguish and name about 5 North American accents (if they’re strong enough), about 10 UK ones, and about 12 Irish ones, maybe more.
I’ve heard that this is because Canadians tend to get angry when people assume they’re American, but I have to wonder if Americans wouldn’t be just as likely to get angry. People just had more available examples of Canadians getting angry because they would tend to assume American sounding accents meant American.
I haven’t seen any get angry at being mistaken for Americans. Just sorrowful.
I think it’s a polite presumption of ability, because Canadians are just like Australians from the anti-Earth on the opposite side of the sun, where it’s cold instead of hot. They also understand humour, not just humor. Canadians are Commonwealth, Americans aren’t.
New Zealanders are a closer equivalent to Canadians in my book: always mistaken for their more numerous neighbours. From now on in cases where I can’t be very sure, I’m assuming that North American English accents are Canadian and Antipodean English accents are New Zealander. While I’m at it, Germanic accents are Swedish, Scandinavian accents are Norwegian, and so on around the world.
Where do you live? I’ve been amazed as an Australian in London to be taken as a South African. WHAT. My South African friends have been just as amazed my accent could be taken as that.
(insert paragraph about accents, inferential distance, cladistics applied to accent analysis, spotting an accent in a language not your native one, etc)
Cambridge, MA right now, but I’m a native speaker of Hiberno-English. Given more than a few sentences it is usually easy for me to distinguish between South African and Australian/New Zealander. I’m not sure if I regard the three as a cluster but there is definitely some kind of similarity, at least to Irish and UK ears.
I’m not exposed to enough New Zealander to be sure of the distinction between it and Australian, and I think there’s significant overlap especially among careful/educated/urban/middle-class speakers.
For reference I can distinguish and name about 5 North American accents (if they’re strong enough), about 10 UK ones, and about 12 Irish ones, maybe more.
And in both cases the confusion lasts only until they speak one a keyword - ‘six’ or ‘out’ respectively!