My name is Sally Tagliamonte, and I am the
chair of linguistics at the University of
Toronto
I started the Ontario dialects project in
about 2008, when I started taking undergraduate
students on field trips to different locations
around Ontario. University of Toronto is actually
a sociolinguist’s gold mine, the students
who come to the University of Toronto are
so diverse and they have so many different
interests, they come from so many different
places, and so to go out into the streets
around the University of Toronto is to embark
on an adventure for a language scientist.
My name's Tahmeed I'm the science correspondent
for the varsity and my background is Bangladeshi
in origin. and one of the interesting words
that we have back home is loadshedding. This
is not a term unique to South Asia, you can
actually hear it in South Africa as well,
and it refers to regional rolling blackouts
in countries that can't meet their power demands.
So in order to ensure everybody has electricity,
periodically electricity will be shut off
from certain areas at the city, and that way
you shed the load of electricity to the people
who need it.
Hi Maya and I'm from Etobicoke. So some of
the words that we use where I'm from… there's
bare which means a lot or money so in a sentence
it would be like oh there's bare people here.
Hi my name is Francis, I’m from Suzhou China
and I speak Wu Chinese
Hi everyone, my name is Rae and I come from
Shanghai, China, and I speak Wu language as
well.
Why don't we start with hello in Wu language:
it is nóng hō (repeating)
Hi I'm Angela and I grew up in New Orleans
or just outside New Orleans in Metairie. So
some slang, the word parish is used to describe
what the word County means in other states
so kind of like how New York has boroughs
we have parishes.
I'm Joy I'm from Edmonton Alberta. Out in
Alberta we have things called bush parties,
which is essentially going to a secluded wooded
area, having bonfires, and we just hang out
and we drink and it's super chill, just a
little party we have pretty regularly
The thing about urban centres is that many
different kinds of people come together, and
so urban centres tend to accelerate language
change whereas rural centres tend to remain
stable over much longer periods of time. The
thing about language documentation is that
languages all over the world are dying. But
the other side of it is that dialects are
dying too. Economies are changing, the social
landscape is changing, and so dialect words,
some of the words that have been long in the
history of the language, are falling out of
use and so if we don't document those words
and expressions now they'll be gone forever
We Chinese people are very humble and gentle.
we even ask for your permission before an
argument turns violent. (says phrase)
That means can I slap you on the face! Wait
a moment here, it only plays a role as a verbal
threat and we don't go physical in a verbal
argument
One thing my friends and I would do after
school is we would “go out for a rip”,
which a lot of people think means we go smoking,
but that really just means we're going off-road
driving In our trucks and our SUVs
Another one is paged or paging which is like
calling someone out for doing something which
is like, she paged me for being late
The dictionary of American slang tells us
that Canadian students in the 90s had a really
interesting definition for the word “wank”
which in the United Kingdom is kind of a vulgar
word, but here in Canada apparantly it used
to mean to party or just to have fun. But
one thing's for sure though, with midterms
coming up you won't be having a wank in robarts
anytime soon
I rate it which is like to approve of something
or to emphasize that you like something, so
in a sentence it would just be “I rate that”
There is a lot of food terms and stuff, there's
like crawfish boils and it's just like boiling
pounds and pounds of crawfish and corn and
potatoes with a ton of spices, cajun spices
This is more commonly used in Saskatchewan,
but a bunny hug which is just a hoodie. Don't
know why, but that's just a thing that people
have said since I was little
Another one is reach which means like come
over, come to where I am
One of my favourites is “slimes”. Well,
what is slimes? We know that it probably means
some gelatinous liquid that isn't very pleasant,
but to me, the slimes were where I played
as a kid, we loved the slimes. slimes were
these flat areas that were once lakes and
they froze over in the winter time so you
could go skating and sliding, and in the summertime
there was all kinds of fun you could have.
We would go and play in the slimes.
You might think that words and expressions
are trivia,l but really they're not because
words and expressions in places that people
use actually tell you the story of history
and culture. The way we use words and expressions
is the way we express who we are and where
our allegiances lie. So when you listen to
the way people use words and expressions,
you're actually finding out a lot more about
them than you realize.
