Our Own Dialect? Yous Guys is Crazy.

A group of students from the University of Toronto has spent the last two years documenting the differences in dialect between people who live in urban areas versus the folks who live in the more rural areas of the province, also known as the bush.

Their report makes much of the word mucking, at least, as it's reported in the Toronto Star, which, being from the centre of the known universe is always surprised by the fact that there are other people out there at all.

I've never heard of 'mucking' with reference to eating, only to stables, but apparently, mucking is the word employed in northern Ontario to describe wolfing down one's food.

The researchers might have been better off hanging out with some of the people in our area, where, while it's on the wane, there is also a distinct dialect.

My dad used to ask me to 'gaffle' things. I always thought it meant to retrieve, although a google search turns up a bunch of different meanings, most having to do with stealing. My dad also never leaned on things; he would be "up aggin" them, which was a short form of against, I guess.

My grandmother used to say she 'minded the time...' referring to remembering something.

And my other grandmother would use 'like' in a far different way than most kids. She tacked her 'like' onto the end of sentences for emphasis, I think. 'I was watching the hockey, like."

Which brings me to 'the hockey'. My mother doesn't watch a hockey game, nor does she watch curling or football. She watches 'the hockey' and 'the curling', since I guess there's only one.

Now, in some circles, 'Yous guys' is normal third-person discourse, and of course, there's there's the ubiquitous 'eh' many of us also tack onto the end of a sentence, in an, 'isn't that right?' search for emphasis and agreement.

So, if ever your citiot friends are in town and you want to prove your local credibility, say something like, "Yous guys wait here, eh, and I'll gaffle me a timmies to drink while I watch the hockey, like. Oh, I mind the time that missed call cost the leafs the cup..."

That'll show 'em.