In this week’s episode, I dive into a fascinating linguistic quirk of the sports world—why do so many American hockey players sound like fake Canadians?
My obsession with this topic started with research from linguist Andrew Bray. He noticed the phenomenon of “fake Canadian” accents while studying hockey lingo. While he originally set out to analyze hockey slang for its own sake (e.g. “biscuit” for puck or “celly” for celebration), he found himself asking an even bigger question: Why do American players seem to take on Canadian-esque speech?
Bray recorded his conversations with players, analyzing their vowel shifts and pronunciation. He confirmed that many American hockey players adopt features of Canadian English, but not quite enough to pass as actually Canadian. Instead, they end up in this uncanny valley: they sound just Canadian enough for other people to notice, but not enough to blend in. This could be a case of linguistic mirroring, which is when people unconsciously adjust their speech to fit into a social group. Since hockey has such a strong Canadian identity, American players may be picking up on those speech patterns as part of the sport’s culture.
Bray isn’t the only person out there studying “Hockey English.” In fact, one study suggests that even Canadian players are accused of sounding more Canadian than they’re supposed to.
Can I provide a simple answer, as a Canadian who grew up in a northern hockey town?
It’s pessimistic but I’m foul these days.
It’s a club of goon bullies, some of which have real skill but nonetheless overall fall into the culture. I imagine there is some equivalence to American Football culture but I don’t know.
Canadians simply represent a huge number of players. They’ve spent years fighting for cheers at night, being incredibly homophobic in the locker room, and fighting for cheers at school in the morning.
American player interactions happen pretty early on the amateur path and the culture just grows. Including its language and isms. It’s part of the show for a lot of people too, like the fighting.
European players for the most part appear not to follow this, but I don’t know for sure.
It’s a Canada to USA culture gradient in an unusual direction, but it’s the same bully culture.
Edit: And to explain my pessimism, education is at least still expected in Canada but these kids run the school including the teachers out of fear of actual violence and or a vengeful hockey mom. Science education and humanities and history expectations are allowed to be traded for athletic and social prowess, and then we elect them because the popularity contest never ends.