LOOKING BACKWARD

There is always going to be a yearning for the past. I know, this blog is supposed to be about “Looking Ahead” and not wallowing in what used to be. This is not just a lament for what used to be – it is a warning that we are becoming something I don’t think we should become: a timid copy of someone else.

I remember doing a program on my old radio talk show about pronunciations. I wondered (as I still do today) how much Canadians seem ready to replace our speech with more popular Americanisms. I started simply. A question: do you pronounce the final letter of the alphabet “zed” or “zee.” I was astonished ant the number who responded with “zee.” I felt then, and I still do, that our identity as Canadians rests on some pretty shaky foundations. The principal problem is that there are thousands of Canadians who would rather be American; who would rather identify with the majority culture; would want to sound less parochial and more “with it.” (The exception of course is French-Canada, where they are passionate about their own special culture, and fight against having it diluted by the presence of the world’s biggest economy.

I come down on the side of the Quebecois, except for the fact that in “protecting” their culture, they seem determined to eliminate the competition. I would prefer to have the competition and to survive in spite of it.

It’s a battle we are losing. I have lamented before, not that I am opposed to progress, but that the source of much learning seems to come from media, which is this country (the English-speaking part) is American. The songs are American. The movies are American. And most of TV is American. So the urge to sound like them translates in Canadian TV announcers talking about the “pre-meer” of a new TV show. (Soon we’ll start calling the head of our provincial government “pre-meer.”) I think it’s because thousands of people never heard the word pronounced until they heard it on TV – which would be American TV. I also do not know where America has derived some of its pronunciations and syntax. I have carped about this before, and this time it is all in the interests of preserving what is still uniquely Canadian. I would not go back to early Anglo-centric schooldays when we were taught to pronounce “clerk” as “clark.” But in that long-gone learning time my English teachers were adamant that people “lie,” and hens “lay.” Canadians now say “I was laying down.” Saying it makes it right, unless you want to have something to preserve.

The Brits are perhaps even more idiosyncratic in their pronunciations. Why they pronounce the city “Los-Ange-lees” is beyond me. Why does “Jag-war becomes “jag-you-ar.

They won’t change it because it is neither right nor wrong; it is “them.”

So what I want to do is preserve what is “us.” Watching our CBC TV evening news a few nights ago I heard the male news-reader refer to “thuh urge.” Americans, rightly or wrongly, do not use what we grew up using: “the” pronounced “thee” when it precedes a vowel. I think that habit kind of crept up on the Americans. It sounds more like something that comes from the inner city not from schools. But I can’t object. If that’s what they want – good for them. But I don’t think they should be exporting it as the definitive way to speak the language.

I still want to be Canadian, and to use the English language the way Canadians do. We have so little to set us apart, it is a shame to see what is left withering because of indifference.

And if that is “looking backward” I do not apologize.