G'Day From The Valley

Oh. My. Gawd.... I stumbled upon this site today, and it just cracks me up and even makes me a little homesick. Ha.

As the title of this post suggests, the site is called "G'Day from the Valley" -- but not the Okanagan Valley as so many of you readers are intimately familiar with. No, this is all about the Ottawa Valley, and it couldn't be more accurate.

The posts titled, "Learn to Speak Valley" made me laugh out loud. Terms like gription, howshe, and my personal favourite, slippy. This morning I sent a bunch of my friends n' relatives a link to the site and added that "I still remember when I learned that "slippy" wasn't actually a word." One friend wrote me back this afternoon to say, "When I learnt that slippy wasn't a word = today. hahahaha I thought it was an acceptable short form of slippery. hahaha" As did I!

And of course, the blog is also sure to include a nice little demo of Valley twang. Ah, the memories...

Now, I'm sure all of you have heard me speak, and have probably never noticed any so-called Valley accent. Well, let me tell you why... Ever since I was a young teen and someone from outside the Valley pointed out that I pronounced "tiger" as "tagger", I started keeping my Valley twang in check. Today, you'd never know...  Of course, I haven't lived in the Valley since I was 19 either. But when I talk to certain people who still reside there and have a real Valley accent, like my sister, I'll let a twangy word or two occasionally slip their way into the conversation.

Sometimes my sister will use a Valley expression I haven't heard in a while and it'll cause me interrupt her with laughter. Both she and my mom are real fans of "holy liftin'". Don't ask me what a "liftin'" is, but I've heard that phrase my entire life. I had almost forgotten about it until Amy used it a couple weeks ago.  Now, my Grandpa Junop always said "holy doodles", but I don't know if that's a Valley thing or a Grandpa Junop thing....

If you look up the Ottawa Valley or Ottawa Valley Twang on Wikipedia it says that while regional accents are rare in Canada, the Ottawa Valley is considered to be a linguistic enclave within Ontario, due to its isolation before the railways, and also through the mixture of French, Irish and Scottish populations. The distinctive dialect referred to as the Ottawa Valley Twang is still evident today among many inhabitants of the Valley.

Interesting, huh? Well, interesting to me anyway....  :P

I should note that not everyone in the Valley has the accent as strong as others. I have some friends who only use the occasional Valley slang word (like slippy), while others like my sister have it pretty strong. But even hers isn't as hardcore Valley as it could be. There's a definite niche of people who have it really strong. They're the folks who call a "car" a "care", a "fort" a "fert", and say "calm" as "cam".

They speak like this... "I grabbed some beers and took de care down to de fert te go huntin' dis mornin', but youse guys weren't der yet. I seen de water was nice n' cam, so I grabs de boat n' de beers n' decides te giver out on de lake til youse all show up. But holy liftin', by de time youse got out te de fert, I was right wrecked. I prit'near drank the whole friggin' case. So I says, "Jimmy, chu'got any beers wit ya, or are ya dry?" Jimmy says he brung a two-four wit him, so we was good fer de rest of de weekend."

Okay, I clearly had too much fun with that last paragraph... but it's not an exaggeration. (As noted, it's also not the majority either.)

Ah... de Valley. I think I'm due for a trip back sometime soon.