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I am American, eh

July 31, 2002 ~ 2:39 p.m.

BOSTON, MA�I must have been a Canuck in a former lifetime. I swear it.

On my last day of work before leaving for my trip, I had a light chit-chat with my co-worker Anton. He said, �So you�re off to Toronto after today?�

I was thrown a bit off-kilter. �Toronto? No, I�m going to Boston, that�s where I�m from. You didn�t know that I�m American?�

His arched his eyebrows, registering a moment of surprise, then replied, �Nah, sorry, mate. I thought you were Canadian.�

Amazing. I�d been working in that office, having regular contact with Anton, for four months. I have a Boston Red Sox mug that I clutch and sip coffee from all day long. I have an American flag on my desk, and a large bookmark of the Boston skyline taped to my computer monitor. That very day, I was wearing a necklace with an American flag pendant. And yet, somehow, Anton had convinced himself that I was Canadian � a Canadian who just so happens to admire Yanks, perhaps.

It must have something to do with my accent. Anton is far from the only one to have made that mistake. While living in England, I can�t recall all the times on countless trains (or buses), in numerous pubs, or answering the phone on occasion, when I�ve been asked what�s life in Canada like and how much do I miss it?

Perhaps this can be attributed to innocent ignorance on the behalf of the British who have a notoriously hard time telling the difference between Canadian and American accents, you say. Surely, coming home to America, I would be recognized and embraced as a fellow citizen, right?

Wrong-o! Yesterday, while out landscaping with my brother-in-law Jimmy and his crew � on a gorgeously humid 95-degree day, I might add � I was chatting with the owner of one of the houses whose buses we were transplanting. I was telling her about all my trips across Europe and was pleasantly surprised to learn that her mother emigrated from Barcelona, one of my favorite destinations. Then she said to me, �so, you did grow up in this area, right?� I assured her that indeed I did.

�It�s just funny, because you don�t have much of a Boston accent at all. Just the tiniest trace. As a matter of fact,� she interjected, looking as if a great revelation had just be revealed to her, pointed at me and concluded, �I have some Canadian relatives. You remind me of them. You sound more like them.� The smile from my face did not disappear, but I felt my heart sink just a few millimeters lower.

Before we did work on this house, Jimmy�s �second in command,� a friendly but hard-edged Bostonian by the name of Chris and I were rolling down the highway toward Westwood where most of our work for the day would take place. I was telling him about life in England. Then at one point, I turned to him and asked, �How do I sound to you? Do you notice any accent?� He shook his head. �No, you sound American to me. I don�t notice an English accent at all.�

Then I prodded him � �Well, it�s funny, because everyone in England seems to think that I�m Canadian.�

Chris gave me a strange sideways glance, momentarily pursed his lips and looked skyward as if digesting a heavy thought and then replied, �Actually, you could easily pass for a Canadian.� And he ought to know � he�s been to Toronto and other parts of Canada no less than 30 times throughout his life.

The final proof in the pudding came during the evening after work. In a CVS pharmacy to purchase batteries for my Walkman, I made some friendly small talk with the girl at the counter. The young lady smiled and said to me, without having been prompted, and without one word about Canada having been mentioned, �Visiting from north of the border, huh?�

So you can take that hypothesis about me fitting right in upon my return to America and throw it right out the window. This can�t be ignorance. Americans are pretty good at telling the difference between North American accents. No, I�m downright friggin� convinced that my accent is to blame here.

Now, it must be said, for me, the last letter of the alphabet is "zee," not "zed." And I also don't insert useless and pointless u's into words like color, labor or flavor when I write; and I never will either, I refuse. It is ridiculous and pedantic orthography.

But I am pretty good at rounding my r�s in the Canadian fashion � �be-errrrr,� �wad-derrrrr (water), garrrr-den� etc. � and while I do occasionally drop the r like a true Bostonian (�bee-ah,� �wad-dah, gah-den �), it�s not very often, much in the manner of a Freudian slip. In fact, there is only one word that I always drop the r from and it�s pattern. I always say, �pat�(eh)n.� This is the one and only word in which my Bostonian upbringing shows, as far as I know.

I also tend to use �eh?� as much as I use �huh?� In fact, I seem to use �eh?� a lot more. Americans emphasize their sentences with �huh� or �right?� (�Hot, eh?� instead of �Hot, huh?� � �We�re going into Beckenham, eh?� instead of � � Beckenham, right?�) I give myself away as a Canadian. And here�s the thing � I seem to have an honest propensity toward saying �eh.� In other words, it�s comes naturally to me. I�m not saying I never use the American versions, because I do. But, as with the dropping of my r�s, it�s never on a consistent basis.

And then there�s the overall package � the indescribable intricacies of my voice, diction, cadence and the emphasis I put on certain words � and by this, I mean, instead of the American �Have you finished yet,� I tend to say, in much more dramatic fashion, �HAVEN�T you finished yet?�) I don�t know if this is more English or Canadian; but what I do know is that it�s not the way Americans would emphasis the sentence.

Both my father and my sister have very strong Boston accents, and my mother � born in Massachusetts, raised in North Carolina until the age of six, and returned to Massachusetts where she�s lived ever since, also has a voice that is as American as American accents get. And here I am, the anomaly, the black sheep of the family, whose voice is more maple leaves and moose than apple pie or lobster.

What I really would like to know is, has listening to English accents day after day for several months in a row affected my voice to the point where I sound Canadian � after all, Canadian accents are American accents with a British inflection � or have I always sounded like this? And if the latter�s the case, how??? It is outstandingly and overwhelmingly amazing to think that I spent my first 30 years in America, in New England, a region rich with distinctive accents of its own, listening to family and friends and interacting with a society possessed of the same voices, only to come out sounding like an ex-pat of a country that I have never even once been to.

Now, I tip my hat to Canada for its very high standard of living and lively culture. (I especially thank them for Big Teeth, Bad Breath, which in England is known as Don�t Eat the Neighbours). I value Canada as a neighbor and ally of America�s. I like you Canadians very much and would befriend you any time (so long as you�re not jaded by a silly inferiority complex that causes you to hold anti-American sentiments). But, do I have to sound like one of you? No offense, but I�m American. I am. Or least I thought I was. I dunno, perhaps I�m just terribly confused. I do live in England, after all. If you�re going insane, that�s the place to be. You�d fit right in.

Well, time to close this up, eh, crack open a Molson, and putter aboot the house.

� M.E.M.

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