Conference thebay::joyoflex

    Ha!  I married a Canadian, so this is fascinating to me.  My mother-
    in-law says "karkee" for "khaki," and I had thought it was just an
    idiosyncrasy.  FWIW, she also says "high-sterical" for "hysterical."
    
    Interesting stuff!
    

    My neighbor married a Canadian, and she is slowly losing the
    following 'Canadianisms':

    	American		Canadian    
    	--------		--------
    	about    		aboot
    	z			zed
    	What do you think?	What do you thin, a? (long 'a')
    
    Bill

    Did he say anything about "shedule" for "skedjul"?
    
    --bonnie

    I didn't forget the ubiquitious 'eh' pronounced 'hay' with which
    most Canadians end sentences. It's just that it is so common that
     Canadian customs agents have often used it as a clue to the fact
    that the person being interviewed was a Canadian.
    
    

    Some more expressions/words to help identify Canadians
    
    We will usually say 'Have you got ....' instead of the the American
    'Do you have ....'
    
    So if you hear 'Have you got the time?' it isn't a proposition,
    the asker only wants to know the time.
    
    Following are a few more British/American/Canadian
    
    British		American		Canadian
    
    dustbin		ashcan			garbage can
    rubbish		junk			garbage
    combinations	union suit		long underwear
    fowl run		chicken yard		chicken run
    

    Sked-yule vs Shed-yule
    
    The official CBC (Canadian Broadcastin Corp) manual of pronunciation
    for announcers says to use Shed-yule.
    
    However only one-third on Ontarians tested used the 'approved' version;
    the others used the American pronunciation
    
    Even the CBC is not immune however. An announcer once read 'The
    train was derailed because the engineer fell behind shed-yule. 
      Now the programs on the balance of tonight's sked-yule'
    

    re .5:
    
    Maybe it's just because I'm linguistic anomaly, but I use all the
    Canadianisms you mentioned. I seldom hear any Yank say "ashcan,"
    and the DECspell American dictionary doesn't even list it.
    
    About eighteen months ago, I had the pleasure of going to Canadian
    DECUS in Edmonton. One evening I sat around drinking "blues" with
    someone from British Columbia, Calgary, Toronto, Montr�al, New
    Brunswick, and PEI. We discussed accents in among all the computer
    talk, and came to the conclusion that there is no Canadian accent any
    more than there is an American accent. No two of us had the same
    accent. They told me, "wait 'til you hear someone from Newfoundland!"
    Last summer, I saw the movie, "The Adventures of Faustus Bidgood" which
    was billed as "Newfoundland's first full-length motion picture." They
    were right. It is an interesting accent, indeed.
    
    	Jon

    re .5;
    
    Your American words are largely archaic. I haven't heard "ashcan"
    in years.  "Garbage can" or "trash can" would be current.  Similarly,
    I think "garbage" or "trash" more likely than "junk" to translate
    Brit. "rubbish" (if, by "rubbish", you mean "dust" :^).
    
    No one in my part of the country (New York) calls long underwear a
    union suit anymore. Finally, since chickens are raised indoors these
    days, I have no idea what I'd call a "fowl run", given that I could
    even find one. 

    I agree with .8; your source must have visited the country many years ago.
    We use 'trash can' mostly for inorganic waste like old functional
    specs, dry ball point pens, dead batteries, and the like.  'Garbage
    cans' are usually reserved for banana peels and chicken bones. 
    Does the English 'dustbin' serve both purposes?
    
    'Long underwear' or 'long johns' are most commonly used.
    
    Bernie

Re .-1  - Here in Chicago, we use "wastebasket" in place of your "trash
    can".  Garbage can is the same.    
    
    Otherwise I would concur.  I have never heard the term union suit.
    
    Susan

    Re .10:
    
    "Union suit" is rather old.  They used to say that when I was little,
    during the period when we used to throw rocks at pterosaurs and
    chase away the wooly mammoths (the late 1930s and the 1940s).  It
    apparently was used more in the eastern U.S.   I have no idea what
    its derivation, though, for fun, I'll invent a couple:
    
    
    Whern labor got organized, the workers developed a new form of long
    underwear onto which they stitched "union," showing it wasn't made
    by scab labor.
    
    If you don't like that,
    
    
    When the Civil War broke out in the United States, since it was
    North against South, only the soldiers in blue wore long underwear
    (the South being warmer).  When Union soldiers were captured, they
    were deprived of their uniforms, lest they conceal weapons in them.
    The soldiers were thus required to walk around in the prison compound
    in their underwear, which was dubbed "Union suits," since it became
    the designated costume of a Yankee.
    
    
    Probably it was something more prosaic, like a "suit" of underwear
    that was a union of shirt and pants.
    But that's not very stirring, is it?
    
    Steve Kallis, Jr.

    More on .5 and replies - you must also take note of regional
    differences. Ashcan is certainly archaic, but it may also have been
    regional, perhaps to New England.  I do know that in New England
    the distinction between trash (or rubbish), and garbage was very
    clear - the latter being organic matter as noted before; however,
    when I went away to college with people from all over the country,
    I found that other regions made no such distinctions - garbage was
    the catch-all for all refuse.
    

    Re: .11 et al
    
    When I grew up there was a distinction between a "union suit" and
    "long johns".  A union suit had short sleeves and legs and was
    basically a one piece set of underwear similar to the 1920's style
    bathing suits.  Long Johns were the same idea but had full length
    sleeves and legs and were worn more in the winter.  Both had a
    "trap door" in the back.      I tend to go along with the "union
    made" theory as the origin of the name.
    
    Re: .12
    
    Let's not forget what an "ashcan" _really_ was.  Back when many
    (if not most) homes had coal-burning heating systems, the ashes
    were stored in ashcans until they could be otherwise disposed of.
    In back of the farmhouse where I grew up there was a pile of 
    ashes that had been accumulating for years.  As a kid it was
    my job to sift the fresh ashes and save the "clinkers" to be used for
    banking down the fire at night.  The finer ashes were dumped onto
    the ash pile.  For city folks, a backyard ash pile was not too
    attractive, so the ashes had to be hauled away, usually to a town
    dump.  Since the contents of the ashcan were going to be hauled away
    as refuse, other household trash would simply be mixed right in.
     

    re. 13;
    
    Thanks for jogging my memory on ashcans.  They were still being
    used in parts of N.Y. City when I lived there in the late '60s.
    I expect they still are.

    Re: .10
    
    >Here in Chicago, we use "wastebasket" in place of your "trash
    >can".  Garbage can is the same.    


    A 'wastebasket' is the thing under my desk - short for 'waste-
    paper basket'.  I always used to say and use 'waste-paper basket'
    until I heard my grandfather (born c. 1890, in Scotland) use
    the shorter form.
    
    b

>   re Note 391.14 by IND::BOWERS "Count Zero Interrupt" re .13
>    
>    Thanks for jogging my memory on ashcans.  They were still being
>    used in parts of N.Y. City when I lived there in the late '60s.
>    I expect they still are.
>
    Burning of trash in NYC was banned in, I believe, the early 1970s,
    and replaced by compaction and "sanitary disposal" in landfills
    and at sea.  While trashcans (or whatever you like to call them)
    may have been bought as ashcans when ashes were common, they
    certainly aren't used as ashcans in NYC today.
    
    At least the garbage isn't in the air!

    Back to .0
    
    I don't remember hearing anyone say "kawkee", it's always "ka(r)kee"
    in England (can't speak for the Scots etc.).

    I have noticed that over the past few years "trash" has been used
    as a verb, i.e. "to trash something" - presumably meaning "to throw
    it away". Oddly enough, in about the same time frame, the use of
    "rubbish" as a verb has crept into British slang, but with a different
    meaning: "to rubbish someone/something" means "to denigrate him/her/it".

    The usage I'm familiar with for "trash" as a verb is closer to
    "vandalize" than "throw away." For example: "Searching for evidence at
    the wrong address, the police trashed an innocent's house." 
    
    	Jon

   I've heard the word used in both the previous contexts.  Sure, it's yet
   another verbed noun (YAVN), but as the new usage is slang you can excuse
   it's lack of preciseness.  :-)  (I guess we'll have to set up a commitee to
   "precisize" words from now on... :-))

   If you "trash" something you make trash out of it, whether that be by
   throwing it away (into the trash), or vandalizing, destroying, or otherwise
   negatively influencing it.  ("I trashed that piece of code in favor or the
   new module." - or - "He trashed his car in an accident last week.") 

   Oh well, trashed another 5 minutes writing a note...  :-)

   -- Sam