Tag: Cape Breton

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Frances Peck

What’s That There, Then? More Cape Breton English

June 16, 2015 by Frances Peck | 23 Comments on What’s That There, Then? More Cape Breton English

We take a lot for granted when we’re kids. Maybe most things. Growing up in Cape Breton in the 1970s and 1980s, enforced post-structuralist studies and a career of editorial skepticism still years away, I barely gave terminology a thought. Things had names. You might not always understand them (like boonabrayed), but you didn’t question […]

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Frances Peck

Notes From Away: Cape Breton English

August 5, 2014 by Frances Peck | 14 Comments on Notes From Away: Cape Breton English

My first job, selling sundries the summer I was 12 to the cottagers and campers who flocked to Cape Breton’s fabled Mira River, was about as far from the language business as you can get. Yet a few days in, I learned a humbling linguistic lesson. Three times the customer bellowed his order across the […]

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