'Magine that: P.E.I. dialect a source of pride and humility

This story is from this week's episode of the new CBC podcast Good Question, P.E.I. 

Listen here.

Good Question, P.E.I. is available on the CBC Listen app, or wherever you get your podcasts.

If you "worsh" your car instead of wash it, eat "badadas," not potatoes, and drive "acrosst" the bridge, you might be from P.E.I.

And proud of it.

"It's this weird thing because Islanders have this pride and humility that they're trying to balance at the same time," said Cody MacKay, a CBC colleague who was born and raised in Summerside.

"Because when you speak with someone, you connect. You get them, right? And the pride is, like, you're so happy, you're proud of where you're from, proud of being an Islander."

But could that quaint accent and dialect be a sign of a lack of sophistication when, say, you're interviewing for a job in, say, Ottawa? 

It's a slippy slope.

"Many people have a sensitivity about their social prestige and the degree to which, you know, others admire them or disparage them in various ways, and language is an important part of that," said Charles Boberg, an associate professor at McGill University in Montreal who is researching distinctive dialects across the country. 

Boberg explained that there are various standard and non-standard ways of speaking, depending on where you're from. Rural non-standards have the reputation of being "charming or quaint," he said, while urban non-standards are often disparaged as "lazy or ignorant."

"But in both cases people may feel a sort of self-assessed sense of shame, I suppose in an extreme case of speaking a certain way, because it suggests that they, you know, haven't received as much formal education as someone else," he said.

Boberg's comments are part of Episode 13 of the CBC podcast Good Question, P.E.I. Host  Nicola MacLeod reached out after receiving a question about the distinct P.E.I. dialect, specifically how the letter R made its way into words like wash and Chicago.

Other CBC colleagues such as MacKay chimed in about their favourite Island-isms.