A Language of Our Own

 

Happy Friday everyone! Hope you all have amazing and fun plans this weekend! Enjoy it to the fullest!

Friday is actually not my favorite day of the week. Surprisingly enough, my favorite day is Thursday.

Friday comes in a close second though! One of my favorite things about Friday’s, especially in the summer, is our lunch!

Every Friday in the summer, the ladies and gents of the office decide on the food of the week that we are going to have on Friday. Anywhere from home homemade goods, pizza, chip stand food and etc. It’s always all so good and a big treat after a hard week! We all get to sit around and gab about everything!

I can’t help but sit back some weeks and listen to these everyday conversations during lunch and in the morning when the guys punch in to start the day.

Here in the Pontiac and the Ottawa Valley in general, we have a language all of our own.

Most of the families around here have some German or Irish decent. For the most part we are English but can dabble in a bit of French. We’re conversationalists and very laid back. All of those combined? You get the Ottawa Valley accent. It’s a language of it’s own!

Let me show you a few examples.

You don’t want to enunciate your words too clearly. Drop a few “g’s” from the ends of the “ing” words.

You are heavy on the r’s at the end of a word. DrieR.

“Th” can be pronounced either sounding like “doe” or “de”. I’ll give you an example.

“Th”e bear = De bear

or

“Th”ough I wasn’t sure = “Do”ugh I wasn’t sure

When Ryan and I went to N.Y last spring we were eating in one of the times square restaurants. The waiter that night asked us if we we were from Ireland.

We both kind of laughed but asked him what made him think that. He said that he could detect a bit of an accent and way of talking that he said sounded familiar but couldn’t put his finger on it. He said the way we put sentences together was like that of an Irishman.

Here’s a couple of my favorite sayings that gets tossed around the office weekly;

- “How’s the hell she’s going?”

- “He’s got all the brains of a soap dish.”

- “Go act like you’re normal.”

- “G’day”

- “How’s that weather treatin’ ya?”

- “We got a dandy one (rain). Still drieR then a nun’s fart though (pronounced dough).”

- “Beautiful day today tomorrow, eh?” – One of the farms favorites

- “Don’t cha worry! We’ll get ya all rigged up!”

Sometimes it can be hard to understand what the guys around the farm are saying. On Friday afternoons, when it’s almost time to start the weekend, the sentences get said quicker and with a lot of gibberish in there. You really have to pay attention to what’s being said.

This isn’t just for the Pontiac people though! A superintendent from a golf course in Ottawa (born and raised in Carleton Place) came for a visit. Very quickly you could tell he was picking up the accent and joining in! You may try to lose the accent but it’s always there and can surface without a moments notice!

Some people think that the way we can talk is a little funny but it’s just a characteristic of who we are and where we come from!

A place I love most in this whole world!

Happy Friday!

xo