€ Dr. Artaud € wrote:

uncle arnie wrote in
:

I wonder if he knows how to say Quebec?

Originally pronounced qwa beck, or (long A) Ka Beck, it has now morphed
into (short I) Ki beck (as in kite). Amazing how a word can change over
10 years or so.

Anyone worth their muster MUST say (short I) Ki beck, it's infested the
American sportscasters as well. I can't even listen to the Canadian news
shows, since they also have shed ules (schedules), yet their kids go to
school, said as we say it, they don't go to shoe ools.


Ki-bec is the pronunciation in French, with the "i" between "key" and "kit".
Kwi-bec is English and also acceptable. I'm sure he would not be able to
say Saskatchewan - correct is Saskatchew'n , commonly mis-said
Saskatchew-awn. You can spot an easterner in a heart beat this way. Try
Newfoundland, which is correctly said NewfunLAND, or Charlottetown -
sharla-town. And the old joke Toronto - tronna. C'naid'jun, eh?

An interesting couple of trends for American and Canadian English is making
the first vowel long: eek-conomic instead of ek-conomic, and the clipping
or shortening of the final vowel in other words: candi-dit candi-date ,
dee-fense d'fense . The second is which syllable is stressed: MARSH-mellow
marsh-MELLOW , BIG-bird big-BIRD . The first in each of these is American,
the second Canadian.

If we're complaining, the most annoying thing is the backwards US dates.
Today is 03/05/2005 dd/mm/yyyy, though the trend is to avoid the number for
the month and go to 03 May 2005 to avoid confusion with 05 March 2005.