The Maple Leaf Rag
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Canada
April 20, 2010
One of my friends saw a documentary on Canada and thought that we eat seal meat here. I had to gently tell her that very few of us actually eat it but some Canadians actually do eat seal meat. I don't, and no one in the southern part of Canada does but in the far north, the Inuit probably eat it.
Canada is a huge country and has many different groups of native Canadians in it. Some of the natives live just like I do while others live 'off the land'. They hunt and trap and eat food that comes from Nature, not from a grocery store. They are healthy and happy, for the most part, just as native people are all over the world. My group of people are the newcomers. We've only been here for a few hundred years. The native peoples have been here for centuries and actually own this country, in reality. We have taken it over but the land is rightfully theirs, not ours.
In case you didn't know, Canada is the second largest country in the world. Only Russia is larger. China and the United States seem like large countries but Canada is larger. You have to realize that, although we are a large country, we have a very small population, only about 33 million.
Although we speak English here, just like the United States, we speak 'Canadian' English and in some parts of Canada we speak Canadian French. Canadian English means that we pronounce the letter Z as 'zed' not 'zee'. Sometimes we end a sentence with something that sounds like a long 'A'. It's written as 'eh' but in reality it's pronounced like 'Aigh' or 'Ayy', just like a long A. When we spell neighbour, we use the u. In many other words we don't take the shortcut that the Americans do, flavour, harbour, etc.
As fas as accents go, most of us speak the same way as the American announcers on the news shows speak. Three or four of the best American announcers are actually Canadian. There are some regional accents, most notably the Newfoundland accent, but certainly not as many as you would find in the United States.
There you go! Some information on the giant land of Canada. If you have questions, post a comment or send me a message. Thanks for reading.
More entries: A New Year, New Ways to Learn (1), English sucks...but don't give up. (6), Learning English is never easy, but it's worth the effort. (4), Easy English Stories, English vocabulary - another way to learn (1), A Shit of Paper (3), Break a leg - another English idiom. , Repost: Are all Chinese girls lesbians? (3), How language affects your life. (3), Chinese Writing (5)
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04:17 AM Apr 24 2010 |
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Mapleleaf Man
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04:11 PM Apr 20 2010 |
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Dannyhiga
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