New Lexicon

There's lots of new terminology to get used to here in London. The garbage can is the rubbish bin, recess is playtime, lunch is dinner. Baseball is rounders ball, soccer is football. Flashlights are called torches and kleenexes are tissues. The washroom is the toilet. Grade 2 is Year 3. Zucchinis are courgettes. Sweaters are called jumpers. Pants are called trousers and underwear are called pants. Buses are trams and the subway is the tube. Taking the attendance is called taking the register.

It's interesting to compare the sound of Canadian English to British (and New Zealand) English, and to realize that Canadians words are much more clipped than most other English-speaking nations. They elongate their vowels more, sometimes making dipthongs (or even triphthongs) out of words that we could speak as a single vowel, such as "tree," which they say more like "tray-ee." They are very sparing in their use of the a sound as in apple...most a's sound like father. Our long a sound often sounds like "ah-ee." And they drop "r" sounds in words most of the time, only to add random "r's" to the ends of other words, especially if a vowel ends one word and another vowel begins the next word. I've decided Canadian children have a much easier time with spelling, because we say words by and large much more phonetically than the British do.

It's fun to listen...and I find myself often having to change my instructions to the children..."No, I mean put the balls in the bucket, not the bin," when they look at me askance and I realize they think I want them to trash the tennis balls.