Reading this very interesting article and learning just how many words I think of as universal are actually Canadianisms. It’s a real eye-opener.
Here’s my thoughts :
1. Parkade. This one really surprised me. What the heck else do you call… one of those? Parking structures? Automobile storage? Places-you-park?
2. Garuburator. I didn’t know that was Canadian, but I am not surprised. I think of it as something only older people call it anyhow, even though I personally love the word.
3. Pencil crayons. What de FUG? I am gobsmacked by this one. It’s such a commonplace school supply that I had no idea there was any other name for it. As a kid, I always liked these more than crayons because they didn’t melt in my hot little hand.
4. Bachelor Apartment. Not a huge surprise because it’s a fairly idiosyncratic term for it. I like it tho. When someone says that, I know exactly what they mean.
5. Donair. I have strongly suspected that donairs were a Canadian invention for a long time, seeing as people outside of the Maritimes don’t seem to have heard of them. And they are so similar to a gyro that it’s hard to explain how they are different. It’s like two different kinds of barbecue.
6. Icing sugar. Not a huge surprise to me because a lot of the recipes in my mother’s cookbooks called for powdered sugar or confectioner’s sugar. Still, did not know for sure.
7. Whitener. A little disappointed that this one is almost entirely Canadian, seeing as it so eloquently evokes the complete disgustingness of non-dairy creamer.
8. Keener. A lot of Canadians don’t know this one either, judging by the number of people who stare at me blankly when I talk about “keeners” and “coasters”.
9. Mickey. Another thing we have a simple name for that nobody else uses. I am beginning to think Canadian English should be praised for its efficiency and thoroughness.
10. Pablum. Another gobsmacker. To me, “pablum” and “baby formula” or just “formula” are all interchangeable. I am sure I have heard the word pablum used in America media, but I can’t think of any examples.
11. Kangaroo jacket. Suspected this one. As the article says, only old people call them that any more, although I don’t know of another term for that exact garment. A “hoodie” may or may not have the kind of single pocket you can put both hands in that marks the ‘kangaroo’ part of it. They were super popular when I was a preschooler in the 1970’s. My brother had one along with his afro.
12. Turfed out. Not surprised by this one… it has that sorta-British sound. Where I come from, “turf” by itself is used as a verb on its own, to mean “throw” but with the implication of “not gently”.
13. Pogey. Also not surprised. And take it from me, boy does it sound weird to someone unfamiliar with it. They invariable ask “Why do you call it pogey?” and of course, I have no idea.
14. Thongs. Oh, so that’s why nobody gets my jokes about thong bikinis being made of shoes.
15. College. I have often wondered if the college versus university distinction was a Canadian thing, and now I know it is. I would say Canadians mostly use the terms interchangably too, though. When I went to the University of Prince Edward Island (second worst school in Canada!), nobody blinked an eye when I said it was where I was going to college.
16. Lineup. Another example of Canadian verbal efficiency. What do Americans call a group of people standing in line for something? I suppose if they know the word at all, they associate with cop shows showing a victim of crime a group of people and asking if one of them is their assailant.
17. Brown bread. This one is confusing because to Americans, all brown bread is whole wheat bread, whereas to us Canadians, there is brown bread AND whole wheat. Brown bread is basically halfway between brown and whole wheat.
Well, those are all the ones that struck my fancy. (Ow. Now my fancy hurts. )
In other news, I am around 2/3 of the way through my second edit of my November novel, and the process had undergone a transformation. Just in the last few days, I have started editing far more slowly and thoroughly. It seems like I am going to end up naturally at the “one chapter a day” rate I was planning on imposing on myself artificially. Instead of just going through line per line changing whatever struck me as wrong without really considering the whole, I am now going through the same chapter over and over.
I am not quite to the point of going through a chapter over and over again until I can’t find anything wrong with it… not yet. But I hope to get there.
Right now, I am still very scared of that idea. It really sounds like it could only lead to a torturous infinite loop where the point where I can’t think of anything to fix just plain never comes. My inner chaos and neurosis is just too strong and I lack the ability to be truly objective about my work.
Instead, I fear I will remain a slave to the echoes in my head and my poor novel will be subject to the shifting sand inside me and end up carved to pieces to no good effect.
At which point, of course, I will see that it’s now a tattered piece of shit and decide that I am completely untalented and off goes a shame and self-loathing spiral on steroids.
That is the fear that has held me back and made me never really take my own work seriously or subject it to any real professional scrutiny : the fear that Iam too unstable to make it good enough.
I am hoping to evolve past that now, or at least try the total editing thing before I declare myself incapable of it.
It just has to be good enough to submit to an editor without shame. It just has to look to them like something they can work with.
It doesn’t have to be perfect.
Perfection is impossible.