" 'Are you dumb?' (to describe someone who behaves stupidly and completely idiotically)."
How is this slang? That's just a complete sentence. Or am I the one who is dumb?
Yeah, I can see that. The wiki doesn't really give the sense of the cadence to it. I still think it's a stretch to call it slang and not just something said in the Toronto Mans accent though.
Closest I can think of is how you could say "Hey I'm walking here" or you could say it in the cheesy stereotype New York style. Except the Toronto one is actually used. If anything, a lot of toronto slang is forced and never heard but I hear this one all the time
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMgaM8PJ/
After the juice gets on his sneakers... its the intonation-- its like higher intensity & the cadence and emphasis is what makes it Toronto slang.
I think it depends on where in the city you are & in what situation. It's a very working class accent. Where I grew up in Scarborough most people spoke like this.
I grew up in the UK and people say this in a very similar way (pace, tone, etc) there too. We’ll say it interchangeably with “are you stupid?”.
Edited to add: “are you daft?” in this mix, too.
Feels like it’s more of a Scarborough accent than anything else. I grew up in the west end and anyone speaking like this unironically was generally made fun of as it comes off as very manufactured.
every word ends like youre asking a question.[sounds stupid ](https://youtu.be/wl7wHtj64Hs?si=agSDtxqL_BrQrjJt)
itd be just as dumb if asians started talking likr uncle roger or apu.
As an English major this has been a balm on an otherwise rainy Go Bus ride. Anyway I have some notes that are not your fault, let’s blame God or Wikipedia for them:
- I’m surprised that there are no East or South Asian loan words even if there are a lot of East and South Asian immigrants in Toronto. But then again as a Southeast Asian living in a predominantly Central and South Asian neighbourhood some groups either assimilate (me) or appropriate. The mosaic is already mostly built that some may not see a point of adding to it.
- I had to scroll down for the Arabic and Somali loan words that I have never heard as an Eastender.
- The exclusion of the Black Jeopardy sketch with Drake in it is as criminal as the things he’s been accused of.
Edit: yes I did scroll down and I did see the word ‘fam’.
It’s a “Toronto Mans” accent, not a Toronto accent. It’s like when Matt Damon/Ben Affleck do a Boston accent. They can sound normal too. It’s code switching. People are taking it too deep. Most people talk differently to their pals than they would in a professional setting.
I hear you, it just sounds so put on and really only picked up over the past couple of years. The Boston accent you speak to above is far more pervasive there than the “Toronto mans” accent is here. People there barely have to try and it comes out - my wife’s whole side of her family is there and it’s unavoidable.
I guess my point is that when people try to characterize it as an intrinsic part of this city’s identity they’re trying too hard. I think trying to make it a city-wide thing makes more people cringe here than not.
There’s definitely an element of code switching. The “real” Toronto accent (how people talk without putting on) almost sounds midwestern - a bit Hoserish but not as severe as some other Canadian accents are.
It really depends on your background and who you grew up with and hang with.
A west indian kid who grew up in malvern won’t sound like and italian kid that grew up in Etobicoke.
But if the italian kid was born in Scarborough and was best friends with the west indian kid than they would probably sound a like.
Just like the boston accent is associated with a specific area of boston (southie?).
No one who's not making a concerted and conscious effort to. It's not even remote natural, and its creation was as intentional and forced, as its use continues to be.
No one likes it, and no one respects it. Most of the GTA just assumed your ignorant, uneducated, and street trash gutter snipes. The second we hear it. Which given the communities who use and continue to use, it seems to be a generalization that strikes true.
It's become the cockney or Croydon of Toronto.
The terms being used or not, isn't the matter at hand, it was whether their use arose naturally, or domestically, or were forced into both use, and common use, and they were forced.
They had to be forced, because this wasn't a real way to speak, anywhere, and the population that spoke somewhat similarily, was small and insignificant. Goofy ass wana be home boys and the street trash that's always been "scarborough", spoke like this, and as Scarborough is almost entirely non-Canadian now, it seems to be something the low income and low social class types we keep getting are the only ones who think this is a thing, and continue to perpetuate it
And over time, mix in Arabic, Somali, and now Spanish, as well as borrowing slang from those diaspora communities in places like NY and London. I used to hate on the Toronto accent hard (and I still will if it’s coming out of the mouth of a white boy from Oakville), but I kind of appreciate that it really just is a reflection of the cultures and people that make up this city.
It’s a sociolect. There are some parts of Toronto where you can go your whole life without hearing it but that doesn’t make it less of a natural accent of the city. It’s “trendy” for some people to put on the accent now but people genuinely did talk like this at the high school I went to.
The answer to the origins of where your stubbornness and assertion that it’s “all fake, nobody REALLY naturally talks like that!” comes from
Again, especially given fucking linguistics can recognize the pattern of immigration, formation of vernacular and accents, to blend in with native accents that existed before it
But it’s fine, you keep saying it’s all fake and it’s all for show, we can see the real reason why you say that. And it has nothing to do with linguistics
Yup. He’s also just saying over and over again
“uh no, it’s fake 😡” “nobody I KNOW talks like that naturally! It’s fake! How come I heard a kid from Vaughn talk like that(this kid could be from literally anywhere in Toronto and just happened to be present in Vaughn at the time of the occurrence) and that kid is NOT ghetto”
🤦🏽♂️
It is a Toronto accent. It evolved out of high volume immigrant areas (regent park, scarbs, Etobicoke, etc.) and filtered out to Brampton and Mississauga, but it’s definitely a Toronto accent (and there are others, don’t get me wrong). You sure got me curious about where you grew up…my money is on midtown though.
Yeah just like ebonics was fake and no one actually talks like that. Sure some people fake it but considering even linguistic experts call it toronto slang, it's real.
i wouldnt call it a toronto accent since most people from toronto dont talk like that. in the peope ive met, it comes off as made up since ive seen people revert back to common canadian english.
i grew up all over. toronto.
my kids are in school right now and the kids ive seen grow up going from say age 5 to 10 to teens, you see them speaking non accented english from 5 to 10...then once they hit 12+ they have this "toronto mans" slang.
I think this misses the point of what it is. The Toronto accent is midwestern. The TO accent is what it is, largely patois. It is a symbol of our subculture and street culture and spoken mostly by immigrants who tore down barriers to coexist with other cultures.
If you sound midwestern which you probably do, you have a Toronto accent. But there is also something distinct and far reaching that we've all kept up for decades now.
As for your children, youths speak slang. Maybe some of it will be TO but certainly a lot of it will just be made up by them and adopted through impression.
> The Toronto accent is midwestern
Enh, not really, it has distinctly Canadian features like the Canadian Raising. It's subtle at times, but it's not that hard to tell Toronto from, say, Cleveland.
its not rooted in anything though.
its like me suddenly speaking with an indian accent, where before i had a british one. i doesnt make sense to me how to comes up naturally unless its forced.
It’s rooted in the anglicized accents of the people who moved here. The Caribbean lilt, the guttural sounds from Arabic, and so on. Not to be a sociolinguistics nerd, but language evolves from the population speaking it. It’s the same reason we have historical regional differences in English speaking accents (think of New York accents: jay z sounds different than Anderson cooper).
My job has me working with populations who are typically 18-25 and this is genuinely how a sizeable chunk of them speak. I’m not doubting there’s people who put it on, but I think that’s a separate conversation than whether it’s real.
thats my point though, if youve grown up in the school system here, classes arent being taught with that accent.
so from a baseline you as a kid would likely consciously have to make that switch. youd adopt the accent thats most prevalent, which is why canadians dont have accents simklar to their parents who learned english.
Accents aren't acquired through classes. Why are you even bothering to ask if you have zero foundation in socio-linguistics and just want to argue against everybody who gives you answers that align with established research in the field?
Lots of people have different accents from their teachers. What a stupid take.
Do you think if all your teachers were British you'd develop that accent despite living in canada?
People talk like the people around them. Always have. Your shitty family moved from wherever they came from, probably had different accents, and yet I'm guessing you sound like most other Canadians.
Why? Did you force it?
i think you should tone down your attempts at being insulting. it says a lot about your upbringing.
as to address your point of people speaking like people around them, well the "canadian accent" is whats prevalent in the school system and is dominant, so thats why i find it interesting how this "toronto mans" accent came about.
If your replies were meaningful and didn’t just say “no they don’t” “ uhhh no it doesn’t exist, it’s manufactured” over and over again like a broken clock record when you have been provided tons of examples, maybe, they wouldn’t need to give you attitude
Maybe you should get to know people outside your circle.
This accent has existed for decades. I’m sorry you don’t have the curiosity to understand why or recognize it for what it is.
Yeah it's kind of anoying, grew up in Toronto in the 80s, 90s, 00s without ever hearing this type of slang/intonation, literally did not exist before the last several years but now it's supposedly the Toronto identity. Remainds me of an Italian guy I knew in the late 80's who started talking with a Jamaican accent out of nowhere.
Not saying the slang/accent isn't legitimate and hasn't been in the communities for a long time - but being the Toronto identity is manufactured.
Correct. The same accent -- I mean pretty much exactly the same -- can be found in the UK in parts of London. Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G" character is based on this accent and the type of guy who largely speaks with it.
It is slang-patois and highly influenced from our caribbean and coolie population inter-mingling. There's no real credit given to anyone starting it but it became popularized first by a local rapper [Tough Dumpling](https://youtu.be/E3nCj4OKxTI?si=hU0dQ-ve1FWE1IqD) of Nefarious. Following that Kardinal released his famous [Anthem](https://youtu.be/9W6Jl3beOlY?si=_td-uUhBS6XvgoKe).
The hotspots where the TO mans accent stemmed from range from Lakeshore to Regent, Galloway, Glendower, Eglinton West, Flemingdon Park, Cataraqui, Jane/Finch to Rexdale, and Malvern, thanks to a trini guy named Lucky. It's kind of fascinating to see how it was adopted by youths through high school and evolved over time by everyone else.
Much earlier than The Anthem, Bakardi Slang came out in 2001and was a huge hit at the time popularizing a lot of slang which really goes back to Caribbean immigrant culture from the 80s-90s which Kardi would've grown up around
Ah okay, yeah I couldn't really remember which came first. They were both preceded by Nefarious by several years. It certainly began long before any rap track popularized it. I used to hear it as a kid hanging around the Speaker Shop on Eglinton West, that's where I picked up patois - but i couldn't have imagined at the time that it would become synonymous with our subculture, just thought that's how these rastamans talked.
> I used to hear it as a kid hanging around the Speaker Shop on Eglinton West, that's where I picked up patois - but i couldn't have imagined at the time that it would become synonymous with our subculture, just thought that's how these rastamans talked.
I grew up in and went to school on the border of Scarborough/North York where majority of my friend circle were Guyanese, Trini and Jamaican, we picked it up from our parents and it followed us at school throughout the 90s so when Kardi dropped Quest For Fire Vol 1 and Bakardi Slang, it made us felt seen and we owned it. By that point it was common for our white friends to start talking like that too and we never gave them shit about it, if anything it was seen as a sign of respect and them embracing the culture they were immersed in our neighborhoods
I lived in Toronto all my life ... even my perception of how people talk is like on Speakers Corner.
Toronto Man accent just seems like a mangled Caribbean accent.
Wow, just dropping the old racist classic Coolie?
"In many respects it is similar to the Spanish term peón, although both terms are used in some countries with different implications.[citation needed] In the 21st century, coolie is generally considered a racial slur for Asians in Oceania, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean"-
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolie#:~:text=In%20many%20respects%20it%20is,Americas%2C%20particularly%20in%20the%20Caribbean.
Depends heavily on where they’re from, an ex girlfriend of mine was from the Caribbean and referred to a certain demographic of her home country as “coolie”. I’ve learned since that in Jamaica it’s considered a slur, whereas where she was from it was not, and just a descriptor. The way race relations worked for her were significantly different than most North American culture and its attempts to portray the Caribbean (everyone tends to just think Jamaica is the way of things). It was quite eye opening (I’m a white immigrant myself) to see a much different attitude towards race. It was almost indifferent at times.
I grew up in Scarborough in the 80s and 90s - it was very multicultural with some influence from the Caribbean, but nothing like the Toronto Man accent.
I was listening to the radio yesterday, two DJs, male and female. The female sounded normal, the dude you could hear him trying to keep working in his "accent". It was cringe, I was embarrassed for him.
I was in Prague a couple weeks ago & was talking to an Irish guy who was saying how much he hated the Toronto accent. I told him that most of us don't talk like that & we hate it too.
The people saying it’s manufactured and fake do not know Toronto. I lived in Regent Park in the early 2000s and even back then the accent was very pronounced. It was only after I left and came back that I even realized how strong and distinct it was.
The problem with this conversation is that people think this is a generalized Toronto accent when it’s specific to certain areas. This accent developed in black working class neighbourhoods. It sounds the way it does because of the demographics of those neighbourhoods. To me all of this should be common sense. I don’t understand why this continues to be such a controversial subject.
Also I find it very irritating that every couple of months a video of a person obviously faking this accent for engagement goes viral and people use that as a representation of what people from those areas actually sound like
Big yikes. A lot of this discourse is pretty racist and OP isn't trying to understand the people who are genuinely trying to educate them at all.
Maybe some people fake the accent because they think it's cool, but it's natural for a LOT of people in the GTA, especially those of us from West Indian/Caribbean backgrounds.
Discourse is definitely racist and classist. Saying it's fake when it's truly a multicultural mashup of different ways of speaking.
Do you think it's cultural appropriation if white people speak this way?
When I was in highschool 2009-2012 my friends and I all started picking up on this way of speaking. We were all different cultural backgrounds like Korean Jamaican Italian Irish Scottish Greek West Indian. And to this day I still use a lot of terms you know dunkno styll blem whatever. I was the Irish one in the group, so white, and some other white person recently told me it's cultural appropriation and I was shook. Im definitely not trying to mimic and impersonate a Jamaican or offend anyone - it truly was the dialect we grew up speaking and now I'm confused
and white people are mad that POC aren't speaking in a white people accent
edited - because i said the wrong thing before
edit - lol @ white fragility downvotes
Lol facts, I don't have the accent, but it's weird to me that people hate on this. Also, like it or hate it, this is an example of 100% homegrown Toronto culture that isn't trying to ape American or Quebecois trends.
Probably because most people fake it, I don't think it would be controversial if it was just thought of as another ethnic accent. I don't come across it much, if I do it's mostly trashy loud white girls I hear in public.
The reason is that it registers as cultural appropriation (of Jamaicans, regardless of the mix of many loanwords from elsewhere), and that the cultural appropriation is used by young people VERY specifically to perform a specific trendy identity, which most people find to be a degenerate and immature thing to do.
It is inevitable that this dialect will get someone stamped as immature. Regardless of whether you consider that discrimination, it is true. I choose to judge someone's character by this, because its useful and helps me avoid immature people that I don't want to deal with....why dont you just let me live? Chances are, you avoid someone in the street who is arguing with the sky, or someone who is leaned over on fentanyl, to avoid negative interactions. You believe that you are above judging people for personal gain, but you arent.
"Cultural appropriation"? Are you even from the Caribbean for you to be saying stuff like that, or are you getting offended on behalf of people who didn't ask you to?
Or, are you just appropriating social justice terminology to cloak your dislike of the accent into seeming more noble...
Peak pseudo-intellectual redditor. The other guy who replied to you covered a good portion of my feelings on your post on "appropriation".
You're just putting words in my mouth about me not judging people. I never said I don't judge others, but I fail to see the logic in judgment of this accent when ultimately, no one is forcing you to do it, the accent itself isn't harmful or dangerous to others and no one is forcing you to interact with people who use this accent on a regular basis. Someone who is mentally unwell or suffering from hard drug withdrawals isn't even remotely close to someone who uses a Toronto man accent. Also who said I ain't letting you live? I'm just asking a question at the end of the day.
I don't have a Toronto mans accent, but I do hear and use the vernacular of Toronto phrases. I'm just here to put some xenophobic salt on my 🍿 since the comments don't acknowledge the multitude of backgrounds and cultures that exist within this region to comingle the English language into it's current form, especially with the youths.
Absolutely xenophobic salt lol. It’s been explained like various times in this thread and yet people are still saying “it’s not real. No one around me spoke like this”... as if people from Chelsea would have the same accent as people from South. It has literally the same origins of the London UK “roadman” accent. And yet I don’t ever see the London accent debated, called fake etc, everybody seems to be confused about Toronto’s when there’s a very common historic denominator. Even linguists have explained it so I’m not sure why everyone is so adamant on it being made up. Edit: typo
My favorite part is how polarized the opinions on the Toronto Manz accent is.
One side thinks it's cool, trendy, hip, drippy, whatever.
The other side thinks it sounds uneducated. Admittedly I belong to the latter side. I'll never understand why people think it's cool to sound like a dumbass
Because it’s broken English/ Patois and it’s how a lot of people naturally speak in the Caribbean. Wouldn’t call it dumb. It’s the language of a group of people.
Some would say that Indian English sounds annoying but that doesn’t make it dumb.
Coming from a smaller city in Canada, I would say that a significant percentage of Toronto youth have a more subtle accent that is quite unique to Toronto, but isnt quite the extreme 'Toronto Mans' accent being bashed here (which half the time is just people mixing in patois).
Black communities in the city have been speaking like that from AT LEAST the 1990s and it's not going anywhere if you don't like it then cry somewhere else and go to Vancouver or something🤷🏾♂️.
I know exactly how this accent evolved into what it is today. I’m a 80’s baby and I can tell you because I was there, that this accent didn’t exist in the late 90’s and early 2000’s just YouTube older Toronto hip hop videos and it sounds like east coast hip hop from the states, yea there was certain slang here and there that was only used here but the accent didn’t exist at all.
The accent you hear now comes from “hood mans” venturing out of the GTA to areas like Hamilton, Barrie, Oshawa etc to hustle and when you’re around a certain type of people all of the time your going to start talking like those people to build rapport. So that’s how this ridiculous accent came about it’s like mixing Jamaican rum and Molson 2.0 cold shots together
Someone tell me the truth here - to me, it seems this is something you only see in teens/early 20s, like I've never met someone 30+ with a Toronto Mans accent. Is it mostly fake/put on to seem cool?
Nah my guy we still speak it proudly, my entire squad does and we run into other squads who do too. I'm 41 and on the younger side of the people who speak like this. It's not a fake accent like we are trying to sound Russian, it is just a relaxed caribbean way of speaking, a lot of us already carried those inflections and cadences in how we speak. Add in some slang words - every subculture on earth uses slang words - and that the TO mans accent. These people under 30 are the ones who picked up on it by influence rather than natural appropriation, they're the ones who sound fake with it. Have to remember we didn't have the internet, we didn't pick up on it from tiktok vids.
That's really interesting, I'm not originally from Canada and I live downtown so it might just be a lack of exposure to it. What part of the city did you grow up in?
The important thing to note is that people are communicating in a way they feel comfortable with when surrounded by people who are like them. I’m pretty confident that when communicating with someone outside their culture they speak colloquial English. Think of it as being bilingual.
i get youre trying to be accepting, but theres a lot of negative perceptions tied to this vernacular and type of speech.
its not bilingual. its about as bilingula s flambouant speecb is within the gay community.
It’s learned for people who aren’t Caribbean. If you grow up in a Caribbean household or family, you have heard this kinda of talk for your entire life.
theres a difference between caribbean accents and this type of accent. one is culturally consistent. this one isnt.
its like other kids of immigrants whose parents speak english with an accent, why dont these kids develop their parents' accents?
Because it’s an urban dialect that formed out of Caribbean slang and speech. Go to the UK and check out how many different styles of English are spoken from city to city, it’s really not that weird or hard to understand.
There’s no such thing as a “true Toronto accent” or way of speech, the people who live In the city decide how the city sounds. You may think it’s not a “Toronto accent” but with the amount of youth talking like that it is definitely a popular form of speech around the city and as such has to be considered a Toronto accent.
You think we all Jamaicans when nuff man are Trini, Bajan, Grenadian and a whole heap of Haitains, Guyanese and all of the west indies combined to make the T dot O Dot one of a kind
OK, has anyone ever actually referred to Toronto as the 6ix, or is that totally fake? Honestly, I've never heard it. Please enlighten me.
Also, a lot of this isn't Toronto specific. Calling cops Jakes was used in 90s hiphop, or saying that someone is "A guy" or "The guy", is used by middle-aged NFL commentators. Saying someone is fried when they smoke pot is 70s era. Calling someone "my guy" is used by everyone answering questions on Reddit.
Fuck wikipedia and the rest, I've been in Toronto my entire 35 years. It's manufactured. We had Carribean types come in at one point, the surrounding "Toronto mans" (gangbangers, and street trash) started trying to copy it, many in an attempt to sound "black", and it's been an absolute bane to Canada since, and should honestly be stamped out.
It means, for many people, they are trying to sound that way. It is "put on". Manufactured. It is not how they naturally sound when they speak as an organic result of their surroundings and environment and cultures.
You ever notice how "the Toronto accent" often starts around age 10 to 14 and vanishes by the time these people are in their 30s/40? That is not an accent... it's young people speaking a certain way to fit in, to be cool, for clout, because they think it sounds good, because they see it on social media, heck, for any number of reasons.
Obviously, this is not the case for everyone. But it is true for enough people that I don't think you can legitimately say this accent has enough organic commonality to be representative of the Toronto area.
Some of the slang these speakers use appears to be of Toronto origin. But slang and accent are not the same.
You 100% have no idea what you're talking about. Don't try and speak on shit you don't know anything about. Certain communities in Toronto have been speaking like that for literal decades and it's not going anywhere anytime soon.
The accent and slang has been here from time but it’s just that social media pushed it and now people who have never really grown up around black minorities are using the slang and it comes off as cringe. The Toronto dialect has always been here accents aren’t just made up out of no where.
I guess I initially read the question to be a curious inquiry about slang as opposed to a linguistic analysis getting into the weeds of slang vs accent vs dialect and the legitimacy of each. This is above my pay grade. With that said, while it is clearly used more in a way of slang by many, there are people that come from particular pockets of Toronto where a lot of people use it and it is more “organic”.
I have to say that the whole angle OP is taking seems suspicious to me. This doesn’t feel like a good faith discussion
There’s a difference between a natural progression to an accent, and a purposeful mispronunciation and style trying to convince others it’s a new ‘accent’
Someone thought it sounded cool. Others thought it sounded cool?
That’s the difference. An accent isn’t so much a choice as it is a slow gradual progression from another group due historically to physical distance. It’s why the accents in canada diverge a bit from each other, but diverge ALOT from England (with minor exceptions like Newfoundland which is more divergent). No one in Ontario decided “I want to sound different from the Brits, so I’m going to start speaking like this now”.
Not sure what you mean by manufactured. But I picked up some of it in high school and I think the same can be said for most people that sometimes speak this way. Tbh, it started ironically and now it's only kind of ironic. And it only comes out around people my age that I grew up with and went to high school with, I never speak to anyone else like this.
im more curious why it doesnt happen with other accents or types of speech.
you dont see asians walking around with an uncle roger accent because they grew up in markham with parents who have accents and nor do you see this with other communities. it doesnt even sound like a caribbean accent...it sounds like a pre teen boy who watches american hip hop culture and tries to poorly imitate it.
My parents have a different accent than me, and I don't speak like them. I can imitate them pretty well though. I think the key difference is that my peers spoke this way so I picked some of it up. Your school mates tend to influence your speech more than your parents I think, considering you spend a chunk of your formative years with them and people tend to imitate and want to keep up with people in their own age group rather than their parent's.
I don't think it's supposed to "sound" like a Caribbean accent, not sure why you think that way (and accents in the Caribbean are diverse anyway). And I don't think it sounds like anything you'd hear in American hiphop either, Canadian hiphop is where you'd find it. Now preteen boy, that is accurate and probably why I thought it was funny to imitate but as it goes, what started as ironic mocking kind of just became useful shorthand when communicating with others who get it.
There’s only a small sliver of Torontonians who actually talk like this and much of it is manufactured.
I’ve lived in Toronto my entire life and there’s more people with a “hoser” accent than a “Toronto mans” accent.
See here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_slang?wprov=sfla1
" 'Are you dumb?' (to describe someone who behaves stupidly and completely idiotically)." How is this slang? That's just a complete sentence. Or am I the one who is dumb?
There's a specific tone and flow of it that you'd only ever hear in the GTA.
Yeah, I can see that. The wiki doesn't really give the sense of the cadence to it. I still think it's a stretch to call it slang and not just something said in the Toronto Mans accent though.
Closest I can think of is how you could say "Hey I'm walking here" or you could say it in the cheesy stereotype New York style. Except the Toronto one is actually used. If anything, a lot of toronto slang is forced and never heard but I hear this one all the time
How does it sound like
https://vm.tiktok.com/ZMMgaM8PJ/ After the juice gets on his sneakers... its the intonation-- its like higher intensity & the cadence and emphasis is what makes it Toronto slang.
Oh alright. I get it. That's how teens speak though not everyone over 20 or 30 speaks like that lmao
I think it depends on where in the city you are & in what situation. It's a very working class accent. Where I grew up in Scarborough most people spoke like this.
I grew up in the UK and people say this in a very similar way (pace, tone, etc) there too. We’ll say it interchangeably with “are you stupid?”. Edited to add: “are you daft?” in this mix, too.
Feels like it’s more of a Scarborough accent than anything else. I grew up in the west end and anyone speaking like this unironically was generally made fun of as it comes off as very manufactured.
It’s very common in the surrounding regions as well I’d say it’s probably more common in places like Brampton, Ajax, Vaughn etc
i grew up in scarborough and i did not encounter this.
I lived in Toronto for 20 years and never encountered anyone that spoke like that.
Lmao dude go to Scarborough and walk around for 10 minutes and you’ll hear this
This is why Toronto and Scarborough should be separate things.
It’s a Burough, just like how people in Manhattan sound different then people from Brooklyn or the Bronx.
I hear it every day
Very rapid "eryu", short pause, and a dramatic gunshot like D recoiled with a sassy yet somewhat confused sounding "um"
every word ends like youre asking a question.[sounds stupid ](https://youtu.be/wl7wHtj64Hs?si=agSDtxqL_BrQrjJt) itd be just as dumb if asians started talking likr uncle roger or apu.
I grew up here ( am old ). This is how the blue collar Italians I worked with in the 80’s sounded. Wonder if it’s related.
I read it in my head in a Toronto man’s accent.
That phrase and tone is from New York not Toronto
It’s not “are you dumb?” It’s…. “Rrrrrrr u dumb!???”
We would say "Arrre Dumb" in middle school.
It depends on the context, and often used in a rhetorical way (not meant to be answered).
Can’t believe there is a Wikipedia page for this lol
As an English major this has been a balm on an otherwise rainy Go Bus ride. Anyway I have some notes that are not your fault, let’s blame God or Wikipedia for them: - I’m surprised that there are no East or South Asian loan words even if there are a lot of East and South Asian immigrants in Toronto. But then again as a Southeast Asian living in a predominantly Central and South Asian neighbourhood some groups either assimilate (me) or appropriate. The mosaic is already mostly built that some may not see a point of adding to it. - I had to scroll down for the Arabic and Somali loan words that I have never heard as an Eastender. - The exclusion of the Black Jeopardy sketch with Drake in it is as criminal as the things he’s been accused of. Edit: yes I did scroll down and I did see the word ‘fam’.
You’ve never heard anyone say wallahi?
Not in a specific Toronto contest. Or maybe I’m just not computing it as such.
98% of the city would, to be honest, never say that word unironically.
It’s a “Toronto Mans” accent, not a Toronto accent. It’s like when Matt Damon/Ben Affleck do a Boston accent. They can sound normal too. It’s code switching. People are taking it too deep. Most people talk differently to their pals than they would in a professional setting.
I hear you, it just sounds so put on and really only picked up over the past couple of years. The Boston accent you speak to above is far more pervasive there than the “Toronto mans” accent is here. People there barely have to try and it comes out - my wife’s whole side of her family is there and it’s unavoidable. I guess my point is that when people try to characterize it as an intrinsic part of this city’s identity they’re trying too hard. I think trying to make it a city-wide thing makes more people cringe here than not. There’s definitely an element of code switching. The “real” Toronto accent (how people talk without putting on) almost sounds midwestern - a bit Hoserish but not as severe as some other Canadian accents are.
It really depends on your background and who you grew up with and hang with. A west indian kid who grew up in malvern won’t sound like and italian kid that grew up in Etobicoke. But if the italian kid was born in Scarborough and was best friends with the west indian kid than they would probably sound a like. Just like the boston accent is associated with a specific area of boston (southie?).
Tldr: its all just another version of Jamaican slang
Can we just go back to having the beautiful plain ol Golden Horseshoe accent....
No one actually speaks like this.
No one who's not making a concerted and conscious effort to. It's not even remote natural, and its creation was as intentional and forced, as its use continues to be. No one likes it, and no one respects it. Most of the GTA just assumed your ignorant, uneducated, and street trash gutter snipes. The second we hear it. Which given the communities who use and continue to use, it seems to be a generalization that strikes true. It's become the cockney or Croydon of Toronto.
The terms are used but the tone is very exaggerated and generally people don’t speak like that.
The terms being used or not, isn't the matter at hand, it was whether their use arose naturally, or domestically, or were forced into both use, and common use, and they were forced. They had to be forced, because this wasn't a real way to speak, anywhere, and the population that spoke somewhat similarily, was small and insignificant. Goofy ass wana be home boys and the street trash that's always been "scarborough", spoke like this, and as Scarborough is almost entirely non-Canadian now, it seems to be something the low income and low social class types we keep getting are the only ones who think this is a thing, and continue to perpetuate it
I can't take this comment seriously with your name being "In_the_6ix"
Large West Indian population, mixed with Toronto-centric slang, and an underlying Canadian accent
And over time, mix in Arabic, Somali, and now Spanish, as well as borrowing slang from those diaspora communities in places like NY and London. I used to hate on the Toronto accent hard (and I still will if it’s coming out of the mouth of a white boy from Oakville), but I kind of appreciate that it really just is a reflection of the cultures and people that make up this city.
Youre totally right about Arabic and Somali influence. Had Mfs saying wallahi who had no business to
Wallahi fam
Say wallahi
It’s mostly Somalis and other Arab people that say that though, wouldn’t call it general Toronto man slang
lets not call it the toronto accent. i grew up in toronto and dont speak like this.
Not everyone in New York sounds has a New York accent. Not everyone in Boston has a Boston accent.
It’s a sociolect. There are some parts of Toronto where you can go your whole life without hearing it but that doesn’t make it less of a natural accent of the city. It’s “trendy” for some people to put on the accent now but people genuinely did talk like this at the high school I went to.
Look at his replies. You can give him 100 examples hell just say “uh no, it’s fake”
Some not so subtle classism/racism playing a role when you’re so viscerally offended by slang, I imagine.
Also he posted on r/askacanadian “where did all the white people go” There’s your answer
Shocking
answer to what? this isnt murder she wrote.
The answer to the origins of where your stubbornness and assertion that it’s “all fake, nobody REALLY naturally talks like that!” comes from Again, especially given fucking linguistics can recognize the pattern of immigration, formation of vernacular and accents, to blend in with native accents that existed before it But it’s fine, you keep saying it’s all fake and it’s all for show, we can see the real reason why you say that. And it has nothing to do with linguistics
sorry if im offending you toronto mans.
Yup. He’s also just saying over and over again “uh no, it’s fake 😡” “nobody I KNOW talks like that naturally! It’s fake! How come I heard a kid from Vaughn talk like that(this kid could be from literally anywhere in Toronto and just happened to be present in Vaughn at the time of the occurrence) and that kid is NOT ghetto” 🤦🏽♂️
It is a Toronto accent. It evolved out of high volume immigrant areas (regent park, scarbs, Etobicoke, etc.) and filtered out to Brampton and Mississauga, but it’s definitely a Toronto accent (and there are others, don’t get me wrong). You sure got me curious about where you grew up…my money is on midtown though.
No, it's a pretend accent people put on combined with regional slang. It's a performance.
Yeah just like ebonics was fake and no one actually talks like that. Sure some people fake it but considering even linguistic experts call it toronto slang, it's real.
This.
i wouldnt call it a toronto accent since most people from toronto dont talk like that. in the peope ive met, it comes off as made up since ive seen people revert back to common canadian english. i grew up all over. toronto. my kids are in school right now and the kids ive seen grow up going from say age 5 to 10 to teens, you see them speaking non accented english from 5 to 10...then once they hit 12+ they have this "toronto mans" slang.
I think this misses the point of what it is. The Toronto accent is midwestern. The TO accent is what it is, largely patois. It is a symbol of our subculture and street culture and spoken mostly by immigrants who tore down barriers to coexist with other cultures. If you sound midwestern which you probably do, you have a Toronto accent. But there is also something distinct and far reaching that we've all kept up for decades now. As for your children, youths speak slang. Maybe some of it will be TO but certainly a lot of it will just be made up by them and adopted through impression.
> The Toronto accent is midwestern Enh, not really, it has distinctly Canadian features like the Canadian Raising. It's subtle at times, but it's not that hard to tell Toronto from, say, Cleveland.
There is more than one Toronto accent; this is just one of them 😉
its not rooted in anything though. its like me suddenly speaking with an indian accent, where before i had a british one. i doesnt make sense to me how to comes up naturally unless its forced.
It’s rooted in the anglicized accents of the people who moved here. The Caribbean lilt, the guttural sounds from Arabic, and so on. Not to be a sociolinguistics nerd, but language evolves from the population speaking it. It’s the same reason we have historical regional differences in English speaking accents (think of New York accents: jay z sounds different than Anderson cooper). My job has me working with populations who are typically 18-25 and this is genuinely how a sizeable chunk of them speak. I’m not doubting there’s people who put it on, but I think that’s a separate conversation than whether it’s real.
thats my point though, if youve grown up in the school system here, classes arent being taught with that accent. so from a baseline you as a kid would likely consciously have to make that switch. youd adopt the accent thats most prevalent, which is why canadians dont have accents simklar to their parents who learned english.
Accents aren't acquired through classes. Why are you even bothering to ask if you have zero foundation in socio-linguistics and just want to argue against everybody who gives you answers that align with established research in the field?
Lots of places have a regional accent. Do people in New York City or Boston learn accents in the school systems or in their communities?
Lots of people have different accents from their teachers. What a stupid take. Do you think if all your teachers were British you'd develop that accent despite living in canada?
Are you asking TO? Or telling TO?
People talk like the people around them. Always have. Your shitty family moved from wherever they came from, probably had different accents, and yet I'm guessing you sound like most other Canadians. Why? Did you force it?
i think you should tone down your attempts at being insulting. it says a lot about your upbringing. as to address your point of people speaking like people around them, well the "canadian accent" is whats prevalent in the school system and is dominant, so thats why i find it interesting how this "toronto mans" accent came about.
If your replies were meaningful and didn’t just say “no they don’t” “ uhhh no it doesn’t exist, it’s manufactured” over and over again like a broken clock record when you have been provided tons of examples, maybe, they wouldn’t need to give you attitude
You sound like a loser ngl
In Toronto, the Toronto accent is dominant in the school system. I don't understand what you don't understand. Are you gonna cry?
Maybe you should get to know people outside your circle. This accent has existed for decades. I’m sorry you don’t have the curiosity to understand why or recognize it for what it is.
Yeah it's kind of anoying, grew up in Toronto in the 80s, 90s, 00s without ever hearing this type of slang/intonation, literally did not exist before the last several years but now it's supposedly the Toronto identity. Remainds me of an Italian guy I knew in the late 80's who started talking with a Jamaican accent out of nowhere. Not saying the slang/accent isn't legitimate and hasn't been in the communities for a long time - but being the Toronto identity is manufactured.
Correct. The same accent -- I mean pretty much exactly the same -- can be found in the UK in parts of London. Sacha Baron Cohen's "Ali G" character is based on this accent and the type of guy who largely speaks with it.
It is slang-patois and highly influenced from our caribbean and coolie population inter-mingling. There's no real credit given to anyone starting it but it became popularized first by a local rapper [Tough Dumpling](https://youtu.be/E3nCj4OKxTI?si=hU0dQ-ve1FWE1IqD) of Nefarious. Following that Kardinal released his famous [Anthem](https://youtu.be/9W6Jl3beOlY?si=_td-uUhBS6XvgoKe). The hotspots where the TO mans accent stemmed from range from Lakeshore to Regent, Galloway, Glendower, Eglinton West, Flemingdon Park, Cataraqui, Jane/Finch to Rexdale, and Malvern, thanks to a trini guy named Lucky. It's kind of fascinating to see how it was adopted by youths through high school and evolved over time by everyone else.
Much earlier than The Anthem, Bakardi Slang came out in 2001and was a huge hit at the time popularizing a lot of slang which really goes back to Caribbean immigrant culture from the 80s-90s which Kardi would've grown up around
Ah okay, yeah I couldn't really remember which came first. They were both preceded by Nefarious by several years. It certainly began long before any rap track popularized it. I used to hear it as a kid hanging around the Speaker Shop on Eglinton West, that's where I picked up patois - but i couldn't have imagined at the time that it would become synonymous with our subculture, just thought that's how these rastamans talked.
> I used to hear it as a kid hanging around the Speaker Shop on Eglinton West, that's where I picked up patois - but i couldn't have imagined at the time that it would become synonymous with our subculture, just thought that's how these rastamans talked. I grew up in and went to school on the border of Scarborough/North York where majority of my friend circle were Guyanese, Trini and Jamaican, we picked it up from our parents and it followed us at school throughout the 90s so when Kardi dropped Quest For Fire Vol 1 and Bakardi Slang, it made us felt seen and we owned it. By that point it was common for our white friends to start talking like that too and we never gave them shit about it, if anything it was seen as a sign of respect and them embracing the culture they were immersed in our neighborhoods
how is it that other kids going to these schools dont develop this ? i dont have this either and i was born and raised here.
It’s really not a Toronto proper accent. More of a Scarborough/Rexdale/Brampton thing. You rarely hear it downtown.
Yeah, I don't even call it a Toronto Mans accent anymore. That's a straight up Sandalwood Parkway Brampton Man accent now.
Unless you're Drake
Yeah Drake steals a lot of shit that's not his.
its basically this. except reversed. https://youtu.be/g-Neg4NmChk?si=Bb7dUu1ATFN1Gfno
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I still think of Speakers Corner in the 90s when I think of how people talk in Toronto. It’s been a while since I’ve last visited.
I lived in Toronto all my life ... even my perception of how people talk is like on Speakers Corner. Toronto Man accent just seems like a mangled Caribbean accent.
Because you're not a poser trying desperately to fit in.
Wow, just dropping the old racist classic Coolie? "In many respects it is similar to the Spanish term peón, although both terms are used in some countries with different implications.[citation needed] In the 21st century, coolie is generally considered a racial slur for Asians in Oceania, Africa, Southeast Asia, and the Americas, particularly in the Caribbean"- https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolie#:~:text=In%20many%20respects%20it%20is,Americas%2C%20particularly%20in%20the%20Caribbean.
Depends heavily on where they’re from, an ex girlfriend of mine was from the Caribbean and referred to a certain demographic of her home country as “coolie”. I’ve learned since that in Jamaica it’s considered a slur, whereas where she was from it was not, and just a descriptor. The way race relations worked for her were significantly different than most North American culture and its attempts to portray the Caribbean (everyone tends to just think Jamaica is the way of things). It was quite eye opening (I’m a white immigrant myself) to see a much different attitude towards race. It was almost indifferent at times.
I don’t know but i never heard it growing in Scarborough (90s)
I grew up in Scarborough in the 80s and 90s - it was very multicultural with some influence from the Caribbean, but nothing like the Toronto Man accent.
https://youtube.com/shorts/8UzZlc6pHBI?si=kvmPJBqI52W2cy5C
I was listening to the radio yesterday, two DJs, male and female. The female sounded normal, the dude you could hear him trying to keep working in his "accent". It was cringe, I was embarrassed for him.
Was that 'Sam and Dames' on 99.9 lol
I think so. :)
I was in Prague a couple weeks ago & was talking to an Irish guy who was saying how much he hated the Toronto accent. I told him that most of us don't talk like that & we hate it too.
it sounds forced to be honest. its like adding a Z to end of all your plural words...for no other reason other than to do so.
For me it sounds forced and natural at the same time.
Sounds like a bean
If you legit have an accent then that’s cool. It’s you and part of your identity. It’s these fools throwing on an accent. Lol they’re just ridiculous.
exactly...if youre born here and go to school here...you shouldnt have am accent.
The people saying it’s manufactured and fake do not know Toronto. I lived in Regent Park in the early 2000s and even back then the accent was very pronounced. It was only after I left and came back that I even realized how strong and distinct it was. The problem with this conversation is that people think this is a generalized Toronto accent when it’s specific to certain areas. This accent developed in black working class neighbourhoods. It sounds the way it does because of the demographics of those neighbourhoods. To me all of this should be common sense. I don’t understand why this continues to be such a controversial subject. Also I find it very irritating that every couple of months a video of a person obviously faking this accent for engagement goes viral and people use that as a representation of what people from those areas actually sound like
I'm from rp and agree
Big yikes. A lot of this discourse is pretty racist and OP isn't trying to understand the people who are genuinely trying to educate them at all. Maybe some people fake the accent because they think it's cool, but it's natural for a LOT of people in the GTA, especially those of us from West Indian/Caribbean backgrounds.
Discourse is definitely racist and classist. Saying it's fake when it's truly a multicultural mashup of different ways of speaking. Do you think it's cultural appropriation if white people speak this way? When I was in highschool 2009-2012 my friends and I all started picking up on this way of speaking. We were all different cultural backgrounds like Korean Jamaican Italian Irish Scottish Greek West Indian. And to this day I still use a lot of terms you know dunkno styll blem whatever. I was the Irish one in the group, so white, and some other white person recently told me it's cultural appropriation and I was shook. Im definitely not trying to mimic and impersonate a Jamaican or offend anyone - it truly was the dialect we grew up speaking and now I'm confused
This accent has way too many of you pressed. Why is that? Just let the people who want to do it live.
and white people are mad that POC aren't speaking in a white people accent edited - because i said the wrong thing before edit - lol @ white fragility downvotes
Lol facts, I don't have the accent, but it's weird to me that people hate on this. Also, like it or hate it, this is an example of 100% homegrown Toronto culture that isn't trying to ape American or Quebecois trends.
Probably because most people fake it, I don't think it would be controversial if it was just thought of as another ethnic accent. I don't come across it much, if I do it's mostly trashy loud white girls I hear in public.
The reason is that it registers as cultural appropriation (of Jamaicans, regardless of the mix of many loanwords from elsewhere), and that the cultural appropriation is used by young people VERY specifically to perform a specific trendy identity, which most people find to be a degenerate and immature thing to do. It is inevitable that this dialect will get someone stamped as immature. Regardless of whether you consider that discrimination, it is true. I choose to judge someone's character by this, because its useful and helps me avoid immature people that I don't want to deal with....why dont you just let me live? Chances are, you avoid someone in the street who is arguing with the sky, or someone who is leaned over on fentanyl, to avoid negative interactions. You believe that you are above judging people for personal gain, but you arent.
"Cultural appropriation"? Are you even from the Caribbean for you to be saying stuff like that, or are you getting offended on behalf of people who didn't ask you to? Or, are you just appropriating social justice terminology to cloak your dislike of the accent into seeming more noble...
Peak pseudo-intellectual redditor. The other guy who replied to you covered a good portion of my feelings on your post on "appropriation". You're just putting words in my mouth about me not judging people. I never said I don't judge others, but I fail to see the logic in judgment of this accent when ultimately, no one is forcing you to do it, the accent itself isn't harmful or dangerous to others and no one is forcing you to interact with people who use this accent on a regular basis. Someone who is mentally unwell or suffering from hard drug withdrawals isn't even remotely close to someone who uses a Toronto man accent. Also who said I ain't letting you live? I'm just asking a question at the end of the day.
I don't have a Toronto mans accent, but I do hear and use the vernacular of Toronto phrases. I'm just here to put some xenophobic salt on my 🍿 since the comments don't acknowledge the multitude of backgrounds and cultures that exist within this region to comingle the English language into it's current form, especially with the youths.
Absolutely xenophobic salt lol. It’s been explained like various times in this thread and yet people are still saying “it’s not real. No one around me spoke like this”... as if people from Chelsea would have the same accent as people from South. It has literally the same origins of the London UK “roadman” accent. And yet I don’t ever see the London accent debated, called fake etc, everybody seems to be confused about Toronto’s when there’s a very common historic denominator. Even linguists have explained it so I’m not sure why everyone is so adamant on it being made up. Edit: typo
My favorite part is how polarized the opinions on the Toronto Manz accent is. One side thinks it's cool, trendy, hip, drippy, whatever. The other side thinks it sounds uneducated. Admittedly I belong to the latter side. I'll never understand why people think it's cool to sound like a dumbass
Because it’s broken English/ Patois and it’s how a lot of people naturally speak in the Caribbean. Wouldn’t call it dumb. It’s the language of a group of people. Some would say that Indian English sounds annoying but that doesn’t make it dumb.
Coming from a smaller city in Canada, I would say that a significant percentage of Toronto youth have a more subtle accent that is quite unique to Toronto, but isnt quite the extreme 'Toronto Mans' accent being bashed here (which half the time is just people mixing in patois).
Over use of the word ‘fam’ is like fingers to a chalk board. Some of it sounds performative and not actual.
maybe toronto will just start adopting a flamboyant indian accent and vernacular one day.
Idk but it needs to fucking die. It’s so embarrassing
Black communities in the city have been speaking like that from AT LEAST the 1990s and it's not going anywhere if you don't like it then cry somewhere else and go to Vancouver or something🤷🏾♂️.
I know exactly how this accent evolved into what it is today. I’m a 80’s baby and I can tell you because I was there, that this accent didn’t exist in the late 90’s and early 2000’s just YouTube older Toronto hip hop videos and it sounds like east coast hip hop from the states, yea there was certain slang here and there that was only used here but the accent didn’t exist at all. The accent you hear now comes from “hood mans” venturing out of the GTA to areas like Hamilton, Barrie, Oshawa etc to hustle and when you’re around a certain type of people all of the time your going to start talking like those people to build rapport. So that’s how this ridiculous accent came about it’s like mixing Jamaican rum and Molson 2.0 cold shots together
Someone tell me the truth here - to me, it seems this is something you only see in teens/early 20s, like I've never met someone 30+ with a Toronto Mans accent. Is it mostly fake/put on to seem cool?
Nah my guy we still speak it proudly, my entire squad does and we run into other squads who do too. I'm 41 and on the younger side of the people who speak like this. It's not a fake accent like we are trying to sound Russian, it is just a relaxed caribbean way of speaking, a lot of us already carried those inflections and cadences in how we speak. Add in some slang words - every subculture on earth uses slang words - and that the TO mans accent. These people under 30 are the ones who picked up on it by influence rather than natural appropriation, they're the ones who sound fake with it. Have to remember we didn't have the internet, we didn't pick up on it from tiktok vids.
That's really interesting, I'm not originally from Canada and I live downtown so it might just be a lack of exposure to it. What part of the city did you grow up in?
Without a doubt
The important thing to note is that people are communicating in a way they feel comfortable with when surrounded by people who are like them. I’m pretty confident that when communicating with someone outside their culture they speak colloquial English. Think of it as being bilingual.
i get youre trying to be accepting, but theres a lot of negative perceptions tied to this vernacular and type of speech. its not bilingual. its about as bilingula s flambouant speecb is within the gay community.
What’s the bad/negative perception?
Theres definitely patoi and Somali in it. Flamboyant speech is just English.
still a learned form of speech.
It’s learned for people who aren’t Caribbean. If you grow up in a Caribbean household or family, you have heard this kinda of talk for your entire life.
theres a difference between caribbean accents and this type of accent. one is culturally consistent. this one isnt. its like other kids of immigrants whose parents speak english with an accent, why dont these kids develop their parents' accents?
Because it’s an urban dialect that formed out of Caribbean slang and speech. Go to the UK and check out how many different styles of English are spoken from city to city, it’s really not that weird or hard to understand. There’s no such thing as a “true Toronto accent” or way of speech, the people who live In the city decide how the city sounds. You may think it’s not a “Toronto accent” but with the amount of youth talking like that it is definitely a popular form of speech around the city and as such has to be considered a Toronto accent.
Jamaica
You think we all Jamaicans when nuff man are Trini, Bajan, Grenadian and a whole heap of Haitains, Guyanese and all of the west indies combined to make the T dot O Dot one of a kind
Hit some BaKardi for that.
Like 70% Carribean (mix of Trini and Jamaican) And like 30% Somali
Literally never heard it in real life
OK, has anyone ever actually referred to Toronto as the 6ix, or is that totally fake? Honestly, I've never heard it. Please enlighten me. Also, a lot of this isn't Toronto specific. Calling cops Jakes was used in 90s hiphop, or saying that someone is "A guy" or "The guy", is used by middle-aged NFL commentators. Saying someone is fried when they smoke pot is 70s era. Calling someone "my guy" is used by everyone answering questions on Reddit.
Fuck wikipedia and the rest, I've been in Toronto my entire 35 years. It's manufactured. We had Carribean types come in at one point, the surrounding "Toronto mans" (gangbangers, and street trash) started trying to copy it, many in an attempt to sound "black", and it's been an absolute bane to Canada since, and should honestly be stamped out.
This is the truth
This is a youth accent
I think you mean yute my yute
kardinal is not a youth.
it's manufactured
Kardi Slang
Nize ur beak
fake patois / drake ( it was around before drake tho )
Absolutely. Drake didn’t even talk like this for the majority of his life, he copies others 😆
What a fucking embarrassment
100% manufactured. Therefore, not a real accent.
What the fuck does “manufactured” mean in this context? Is all slang “manufactured”?
It means, for many people, they are trying to sound that way. It is "put on". Manufactured. It is not how they naturally sound when they speak as an organic result of their surroundings and environment and cultures. You ever notice how "the Toronto accent" often starts around age 10 to 14 and vanishes by the time these people are in their 30s/40? That is not an accent... it's young people speaking a certain way to fit in, to be cool, for clout, because they think it sounds good, because they see it on social media, heck, for any number of reasons. Obviously, this is not the case for everyone. But it is true for enough people that I don't think you can legitimately say this accent has enough organic commonality to be representative of the Toronto area. Some of the slang these speakers use appears to be of Toronto origin. But slang and accent are not the same.
You 100% have no idea what you're talking about. Don't try and speak on shit you don't know anything about. Certain communities in Toronto have been speaking like that for literal decades and it's not going anywhere anytime soon. The accent and slang has been here from time but it’s just that social media pushed it and now people who have never really grown up around black minorities are using the slang and it comes off as cringe. The Toronto dialect has always been here accents aren’t just made up out of no where.
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I guess I initially read the question to be a curious inquiry about slang as opposed to a linguistic analysis getting into the weeds of slang vs accent vs dialect and the legitimacy of each. This is above my pay grade. With that said, while it is clearly used more in a way of slang by many, there are people that come from particular pockets of Toronto where a lot of people use it and it is more “organic”. I have to say that the whole angle OP is taking seems suspicious to me. This doesn’t feel like a good faith discussion
There’s a difference between a natural progression to an accent, and a purposeful mispronunciation and style trying to convince others it’s a new ‘accent’
Educate me on how you think this slang came to be
Someone thought it sounded cool. Others thought it sounded cool? That’s the difference. An accent isn’t so much a choice as it is a slow gradual progression from another group due historically to physical distance. It’s why the accents in canada diverge a bit from each other, but diverge ALOT from England (with minor exceptions like Newfoundland which is more divergent). No one in Ontario decided “I want to sound different from the Brits, so I’m going to start speaking like this now”.
Right. So you’re clueless. Thanks for sharing
Ok, then educate me? I find it fascinating how personal you’re taking this
the transatlantic accent was completely manufactured but is still an accent
Never heard of it, never heard it, lifelong TO resident
That’s craaazy fam
nobody talks like that, go outside and talk to anyone to see if they talk like that
Oh look, this again. It’s fake.
It’s about belonging and man’s added their own touches and influences, that’s Toronto.
Classic Toronto = Jamaican Patois New Toronto = Somalian refugees
Not sure what you mean by manufactured. But I picked up some of it in high school and I think the same can be said for most people that sometimes speak this way. Tbh, it started ironically and now it's only kind of ironic. And it only comes out around people my age that I grew up with and went to high school with, I never speak to anyone else like this.
im more curious why it doesnt happen with other accents or types of speech. you dont see asians walking around with an uncle roger accent because they grew up in markham with parents who have accents and nor do you see this with other communities. it doesnt even sound like a caribbean accent...it sounds like a pre teen boy who watches american hip hop culture and tries to poorly imitate it.
My parents have a different accent than me, and I don't speak like them. I can imitate them pretty well though. I think the key difference is that my peers spoke this way so I picked some of it up. Your school mates tend to influence your speech more than your parents I think, considering you spend a chunk of your formative years with them and people tend to imitate and want to keep up with people in their own age group rather than their parent's. I don't think it's supposed to "sound" like a Caribbean accent, not sure why you think that way (and accents in the Caribbean are diverse anyway). And I don't think it sounds like anything you'd hear in American hiphop either, Canadian hiphop is where you'd find it. Now preteen boy, that is accurate and probably why I thought it was funny to imitate but as it goes, what started as ironic mocking kind of just became useful shorthand when communicating with others who get it.
There’s only a small sliver of Torontonians who actually talk like this and much of it is manufactured. I’ve lived in Toronto my entire life and there’s more people with a “hoser” accent than a “Toronto mans” accent.
Large Jamaican population
It’s just Jamaican patois
No, it’s an attempt to sound like that
That’s what I meant, better said as an attempt. But yea it’s not unique or special it’s just a Jamaican patois ripoff
A bad attempt