Friday, April 01, 2005

Abrupt Speech Changes in Canada

Interesting. Being born in New Mexico, and living in California, I was unaware of anyone pronouncing avenue as aven-you. But being from NM, I certainly understand having local ways being trampled by outsiders. And if the outsiders control the media, heaven help us!
I was at my limit. I heard yet another one of my friends replace ‘avenyou’ with ‘avenoo.’ It wasn’t that there was anything necessarily wrong with pronouncing avenue without the ‘you’ (or what is called a y-continuant in linguistic circles), it’s just that the y-continuant wasn’t missing from the word before I left for a European summer vacation only 3 months before!

It seemed as if everyone I knew had adopted the new avenoo, and it was driving me nuts. Maybe, I thought, they were conspiring to test my sanity. The nagging question actually drove me to consult the University of Winnipeg’s voice and diction coach, who also noticed the trend. She said that it was an American speech pattern, heard commonly in the media on American television programs. But, she said, it seems that the pronunciation has finally spread like wildfire north of the 49th parallel – our old pattern has been all but dropped entirely in Canadian television and radio, and now, among the general public.

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