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The Maple Leaf Rag

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Mapleleaf Man

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.  

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04:17 AM Apr 24 2010

Mapleleaf Man
Canada

Yes you are the person I mentioned. No one else has asked me about seal meat but many people think Canada is covered in snow all year. The Americans, who live right next to us, don't know anything about Canada. I love that because we play jokes on them all the time. Rick Mercer, a TV show host and comedian, goes down and asks them opinions on silly things that show they know nothing about Canada and then puts the videos on TV, on youtube too. They don't even know about their own country either. It's a bit frightening, actually. :)

04:11 PM Apr 20 2010

Dannyhiga

Dannyhiga
Peru

 

 I believe I'm the friend you mentioned in the first line.. LOL .. :)

 I didn't know that Canada was larger than CHINAA!! D: It's a huuuge country then!! :)))