Hiya, welcome to EngVid, eh? My name's Ronnie, eh? Today, I'm going to teach you some Canadian
vocabulary, eh? Why does Ronnie keep on saying "eh"? This is a very Canadian thing to say.
I am Canadian, in case you didn't know this. I was born in Canada. Canada's a beautiful
country to live in. Is it? Yeah. The winters are very cold, the summers are really hot.
There's lots of fun things to do, especially drinking. So I'm going to teach you 10 or
11 or 12 or 2 million words that are very much Canadian. And they're so Canadian that
they're from basically where I grew up in Ontario or around Toronto, Canada. The first
one is "canuck". "Canuck" is actually a word for a Canadian. So "canuck" is a Canadian.
It's such a famous word that we have a hockey team named after the Canucks. They're called
the Vancouver Canucks. Hockey is a very, very, very, very, very extremely popular sport in
Canada. It's not our national sport. Our national sport is lacrosse. But the most popular sport
is hockey. I would make a bet that 42% of the people, the boys that grew up in Canada
played hockey at one point in their life. So the first word is "canuck". "Canuck" means
Canadian. The second word is very much just a Canadian word. It's called a "toque". What
is a toque, you might ask? A toque is a hat like this. In America, they use the word "beanie".
Now a toque doesn't have to have a beautiful pom-pom like mine does, but a toque is a winter
hat. The pronunciation of this word is different than the spelling because it's French. This
is spelt "toque". The word itself, "que", is a French spelling, so any time that you
have a Canadian word with a "que" in it, it's taken from the French language and it's spelt
like a "que" or it's sounded like a "que". The next one we get into are famous drinks
in Canada. For some reason, Canadians like beer. Everyone likes beer, but we have special
names for our alcohol. If we get a case of beer, or 24 beers are in a case, we call it
a "tufor". We also have a holiday called May 24th that we call May Tufor. May 24th or May
Tufor is Queen Victoria's birthday. Now as you might know, Queen Victoria was a queen
from England, but history, history, England, Canada, long story short, we call it May Tufor
and we drink beer. The next one is, or the next three, are not actually to do with beers
but alcohol like liquor, vodka, tequila, rum, whatever liquor you like to drink. If you
go to the liquor store in Ontario called the LCBO, let's write that down, it's very important,
the L-C-B-O, this is in Ontario, it's the only place you can buy liquor, unfortunately.
You might hear people saying in the store, "Oh, I'm going to grab a Mickey." Mickey Mouse?
Mickey what? Huh? Huh? What are you talking about Mickey? A Mickey is the smallest amount
of alcohol you can buy. It's 350 milliliters and it's only, like I said, liquor. It's not
beer. The next size up is a 40, which makes sense, is 40 ounces. And then we have a 60,
which is 60 ounces. So maybe when you're in the LCBO, you hear people saying, "I'm going
to get a 40 of tequila and a 60 of rum, and I'm going to pick up a Mickey of vodka." These
are talking in Canadian slang about how much alcohol they're going to get. Yay.
The next one is poutine. I think that sounds like a dirty word. I don't know why, I just
do. But poutine is Canadian food. It's actually from, again, French Canada, and that's why
it's poutine. Poutine is very fat and lots of calories for us. Poutine is French fries
with cheese and gravy. Gravy is basically beef fat with flour and salt. Very healthy.
So we have some fried potatoes with cheese and gravy, mixed it all up, thrown some seasoning,
have a beer, and it's called poutine. This is our famous food in Canada.
The next one is very, very, very popular and famous in Canada. It started, if I have this
correct, at a donut shop that was Canadian, now it's not Canadian, called Tim Hortons.
Tim Hortons is another famous Canadian restaurant or coffee shop. Tim Hortons was a hockey player,
but he died, and he opened up a donut chain before he died. And Tim Hortons is only in
Canada, but I have seen them in Ireland. Tricky, tricky. Tim Hortons got bought out by an American
company, so they're no longer Canadian. But we have invented the famous Double-Double.
So you can walk into a Tim Hortons and say, "Good day. I'd like a Double-Double." And
then people go, "Okay." And you get your coffee. What is a Double-Double? It's a coffee with
two cream, two sugars. Double-Double. We might say single-single, I don't know, but we definitely
say Double-Double. Double-Double is two cream, two sugar, Tim Hortons. If you walked into
another coffee shop that's not Tim Hortons and you said, "Double-Double," they might
look at you strange and go, "Would you like a latte, a grande latte, a smaller latte?"
So Tim Hortons is usually where this is said and where it originated from. So Double-Double
is a coffee with two cream and two lovely sugars. Yay.
The next one that is very Canadian is a dart. Now you might know dart as a pub game where
you throw a dart at a bullseye, but a dart in Canada is actually a cigarette. Or we might
say also a smoke, which is another slang word for cigarette. So someone might say to you,
"Hey, got a dart?" And you, "No, I don't have a dart." "Oh, a cigarette, yes." Or they might
say, "Do you got a smoke?" "A cigarette, okay. Okay, we're getting this." So maybe you go
to Tim Hortons, you have a coffee, go outside for a dart, then you want to eat some food
so you get some poutine.
There's another curious thing about Canada and it's called weed. You might know weed
as something like a plant that grows in your garden, like a dandelion. But weed is actually
a slang term for marijuana. Marijuana is not really legal in Canada, but it is decriminalized,
which means the police will not put you in jail for having marijuana, a lot of it. It's
up to you, isn't it? So we usually call marijuana weed.
And the last one, the fun one, as I started off, is "eh." I hear a lot of Australians
also using "eh," but Americans make fun of us because we say "eh" apparently all the
time, "eh." "Eh" is a tag question. Americans will say "yeah" or "huh," and we have traditionally
said "eh." So for example, if I was to see someone on the street, I'd say, "It's cold
here, eh? Where you going, eh? What's up, eh?" In America, you'd say, "It's cold, huh?"
or "It's cold, yeah?" So "eh" is a very, very Canadian tag question that a lot of people
make fun of us for. Don't do that.
So come to Canada. Learn about all these things. Eat some food. Drink some booze. Drink some
coffee. Be a Canuck. There's one more that you need to do. If you go to the very, very
east coast of Canada, there are people called Newfies. Let me write that for you. A Newfie
or Newfies are people from Newfoundland or Newfoundland, as it looks like on the map.
People from Newfoundland are called Newfies. They are one of the most amazingly warm, funny,
generous, fun, crazy people you'll ever meet in your life. They are located in Newfoundland
in Canada. So please come to our great country. Have a dart, have a coffee, have a double-double,
and enjoy the nature. Bye.