Exploring Cape Breton’s Canadian-Celtic Dialect
The little eastern island with a whole lot of character
“Jeet’yet?” My grandmother would ask my grandfather in a rapid mash-up of semi-English sounding words which meant “did you eat yet?”
“na’you’by?” He would reply (“no, have you?”). She would smile as she opened the fridge and grabbed the pot of Irish stew to plop on the stove. I sat as child, entertained by their funny accents and slang.
Growing up in Halifax, the capital of Nova Scotia, my trips to Cape Breton to visit my mom’s family were always filled with linguistic adventures. I lived in the “big” city; the largest city in Canada east of Montreal (a 14-hour drive eastof Montreal, for those wondering about just how large Canada is). In the “big” city (pop. 350,000) we had much milder accents. Like many places, the more rural you go, the stronger the accent and dialect can become.
Cape Breton is arguably the accent and dialect heartland of Nova Scotia. My mom’s family grew up near the unique Scottish Gaelic-influenced highlands of that island. After every visit my parents would facepalm at all of the slang and accent I had picked up. “Use proper elocution,” they would tell me, adding that it’s easier to get a job and ensure people can understand you.
Sadly, their comments were true. People with thick accents and dialects that are in the working-class minority are shown to be taken less seriously in jobs and academia. Despite these things having nothing to do with intelligence, many cultures rank accents and dialects along class and wealth. This is called Glottophobia. So I pushed down the accent, only understanding the politics of that choice when I took linguistics classes in my undergraduate.
Now, I am proud of the dialect and I encourage everyone who has a rare one to be proud of theirs. These are parts of my cultural heritage, and whenever I hear a Cape Breton accent, I imagine that somebody is friendly, generous, and probably incredibly funny. Rarely am I wrong.
A (Ridiculously) Quick History Lesson
Cape Breton was one of the first areas Europeans settled in North America. The indigenous Mi’kmaq people had called these lands home for thousands of years before the French Acadians showed up, looking mainly for farmland in the 1600s. Shortly after came the more brutal English, battling for control of the region against France, and leading to much worse conditions for the indigenous people.
Finally, a fair bit later came the Scottish highlanders, landing ashore escaping highland clearances and potato famine. An estimated 25,000 Gaelic-speaking Scots descended upon the lands in the mid-18th and 19th centuries. At its linguistic peak around 100,000 people in Cape Breton spoke Scottish Gaelic.
Despite the ancient Mi’maq culture, the massive French influence, and English language-dominance, the biggest influence on the accent and dialectcomes from Celtic origins.
Cape Bretoner’s on social media have gone viral for people mistaking their accent for Irish (not so much Scottish though, surprisingly). It’s not hard to see why, when there is a lyrical waxing to our sentences, and many of our sayings and words derive from those Celtic roots.
When I studied Scottish-Gaelic in my undergraduate, I finally was able to piece together just how Celtic the island’s dialect is today. If you want to hear an example and judge for yourself, check out this video.
Some Cape Breton Grammar, by’!
We throw around pronouns and verb tenses like English is our second language. Why not give gender to everything? “It” is a boring pronoun!
In Cape Breton, you will more often find someone asking, “how’s she going, by?” (And by’ is just our own slang for bud, friend, or mate). Weather? Oh, she’s feminine and she’s thriving! “She was some cold last night, I tell ya!” Everything has a gender in our dialect, which always lent it an air of animism to me.
Gaelic (the Scottish dialect, which I will be referring to here) is a lively language. It has gender in grammar the same way that French uses “le” (masculine) or “la” (feminine) to refer to a table or a chair. But it’s different for the Celts; the weather has a gender because it’s alive. And when many people learned (or were forced to learn) English, they carried over the liveliness of their mother tongue.
The harsh climate of coastal, mountainous living meant that the Scottish highlanders had to be intimately connected with the land. When they came to Cape Breton, it only seems natural they would settle into the highlands of the west. Here, the remnants of grammar, worldview, and superstition carried on removed from the bustling, multicultural hubs of big cities like Toronto and Montreal.
You might have noticed another grammatical “error” in an above phrase. “She was some cold last night!” That’s not an error, though. We love the word some, we replace “so cold” with “some cold” and “so tired” with “some tired.”
Then there’s verbs being matched (or not matched) with the pronoun. If you say “they said to him,” you should probably correct it to, “they says to him.” This confuses many people, because even though something was in the past, we might change the tense as well as the correct usage for the person referred to.
It was not uncommon for me to listen to my grandmother recount a story like the following: “so I says to her, she was some cold last night, I tell ya’ by. But she says to me, Kay, youse was some cold cause youse had no scotch before bed!” Imagine all of this spoken really quickly, with a hint of a lilting Irish accent.
Celtic Words and Sounds
I had a great-uncle who was the spoon playing champion of Cape Breton (oh yes, that’s a thing by’)! He would regularly host a kitchen ceilidh; the most popular type of house party.
Ceilidh (pronounced kay-lee) is a very popular word in Cape Breton, because we do love a good party. A kitchen ceilidh is when everyone gathers into the kitchen, because we also love to eat, and ends up playing fiddle, spoons, guitar, or whatever is laying around until everyone is singing, dancing, and/or eating. Most parties end up in the kitchen, and you may go home very drunk but never hungry.
Failte (pronounced faal-cha) is a word that may not be spoken as much, but you will find it written at the entrance to countless pubs and restaurants. Failte means welcome in Gaelic, and that welcomeness is enshrined in Cape Breton culture.
Then there is something called the “Gaelic gasp.” Not so much a word as a leftover sound, it’s when we inhale while saying “ya” multiple times at the end of a sentence, usually in response to a question. Can you do the Gaelic gasp?
You can also see the influence in the way that we drop the “t” and “d” sound in many words. Battery becomes “ba’ry,” water becomes “waa’er,” and rudder become “ruh’er”. We also have a tendency to exaggerate the “a” sounds in a word and drop the “t”. One thing that always made my parents shake their head was when I would reply with “whaaa?” Instead of “what?”
We’re also not huge fans of the very English “th” sound that you see in words like thought or thistle. Expect to hear someone say “trou” instead of through. Gaelic does not have a “th” sound, which carried on to our dialect.
If you examine Gaelic words and their pronunciation closely, you’ll see that many words end with an “aaa” sound even if the word ends with a -gh, a -dh, or another consonant. Ceilidh is a good example, as you pretend the dh doesn’t exist (well some Scottish speakers might have a bit more of a gentle “agh” sound). French words do this all the time!
Quiz Time: Unique Regional Phrases
Can you guess what some of these phrases are saying? Remember that Capers talk fast. Sometimes whole sentences will morph into five smushed-together sounds that make it sound like it’s not even English.
1. “Oh g’wen’witcha!”
2. “What a sin!”
3. “Gettin’ pogey”
4. “Wat’cher fadder’s fadder’s name?”
5. “Scoff”
Ready to see if you understand Cape Breton-ese?
1. “Oh, go on with you!” Is a phrase you say when someone is telling you a crazy story, whether it’s believable or not.
2. “His car got stuck in the snow and he had to walk 2km! What a sin!” An expression when misfortune befalls someone. Sometimes people shorten it to just “sin” while doing that Gaelic-gasp and shaking their head in sympathy.
3. “He lost his job so now he’s getting pogey.” I don’t know if this term has a Celtic origin, but pogey is our word for getting unemployment insurance.
4. “What is your father’s father’s name?” Because most of us are distant cousins, and the majority of Capers have a Scottish or Acadian last name, we need to know if we’re related when we meet (or clan enemies of times’ past)! You don’t want to date your 2nd cousin.
5. “He’s cooking up a scoff!” When someone is cooking a huge amount of food that could feed the whole village, literally or metaphorically speaking.
Are you from Cape Breton? What else would you add? If you’re from the UK or Ireland, do you recognize any of these things?
The Cape Breton dialect has always helped me feel connected to my Celtic ancestry. In these lands you can also go to bagpipe college, Gaelic school, or learn highland dancing. It’s just one example of Canada’s fascinating multicultural regions.
The Acadians dominate New Brunswick, French-Quebecois in Quebec. The prairies have a ton of Ukrainians, Poles, and Russians. Manitoba is home to a large Metis community (mixed ancestry Indigenous and French culture). And if you go Gimli, Manitoba, you’ll find the largest Icelandic community outside of Iceland… right in the centre of our continent!
All of this highlights that vastness of our massive modern nation, culturally and linguistically. But just know that when you go to Cape Breton, be prepared to be welcomed widely, fed heavily, and listening to a phrase multiple times.
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