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Support for Canadian programming conventions in the Ruby language
- MichaelCrawford 12y agoI was once married to a Canadian. She got furiously angry when I pointed out that she said "aboot". But yes, she said "aboot".
- papercrane 12y agoTypically Canadian's pronounce it about as əˈbəʊt. A boot is pronounced əˈbu̟t. The sounds are distinct, but similar. I think many Americans here it as "aboot" because they're not used to the phonetic raising.
- mjburgess 12y agoso, aprox. uh'buh oh t
- papercrane 12y agoYeah, that seems like a good approximation to me.. People are probably wondering why I'm sitting here mouthing about. This is good sound clip actually. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:En-us-about,_a_boot,_a_boat.ogg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:En-us-about,_a_boot,_a_bo...
- achr2 12y agoIt's also funny that Americans speak of an all encompassing Canadian accent, when Canadians would never lump the Texan, Minnesotan, or New Jersey accents together. We are a vast, sporadically populated country with as many accents as any other huge territory.
- dblohm7 12y agoI find that pronunciation to be the most noticeable in Southern Ontario. In Western Canada, not so much.
- jonny_eh 12y agoTo me it sounds like "a boat".
- PeterWhittaker 12y agoI'm too lazy to find the reference right now, but one's brain essentially has "pigeon holes" (sorting boxes) for sounds. If one's language has few vowels, one has few boxes, if one's language has many vowels, one has many boxes. Each time one hears a sound, one's brain maps it to the box containing the closest sound. Canadians generally use a few more vowels (and French speakers even more) than Americans do (with the exceptions of Minnesotans and a few others, who hear Canadians say "about" when they say "about). The way many (most?) of us pronounce out, bout, and about uses a vowel combination unknown to most Americans. The nearest sound, the nearest box, maps to "oot", "boot", and "aboot". So it's not us sayin' the wrong thing, it's all'y'all not havin' the auditory wherewithal to pick up what we're puttin' down! Sorry 'bout that, eh? (EDIT: When I learn a new language, I spend quite a bit of time with my eyes closed, listening intently to the sounds for which I have no boxes, mouthing them as best as I can, consciously building a new box.)
- rdmcfee 12y agoI hope this will continue to be supported as I'll be including it in my projects going forwards.
- wglb 12y agoYes, many Canadians pronounce "aboot", but you don't find the ", eh?" construction all over Canada, particularly out west.
- papercrane 12y agoI always considered "eh?" to be very much a central Canadian thing (just Ontario maybe?)
- wglb 12y agoHaving grown up in the ecosphere of Lethbridge, I never heard that construction until I came back east. (We would frequently watch "Front Page Challenge", one of the longer-running TV programs anywhere.)
- jonny_eh 12y agoI'd argue the opposite. I find "eh" is super common across the nation while the "aboot" rather rare.
- vezzy-fnord 12y agoSimilarly, British conventions for PHP: https://www.addedbytes.com/blog/if-php-were-british/ https://www.addedbytes.com/blog/if-php-were-british/