The Cape Breton accent describes variants of Canadian English spoken on Cape Breton Island, a large island on the north-eastern coast of the province of Nova Scotia in Canada, comprising about one-fifth of the province's area as well as population. Most of the inhabitants of European ancestry descend from people long resident on the island, and the community has had time to develop a local dialect. Many on the Island are descended from Highland Scottish settlers fleeing the Highland Clearances. But there has long been a French-Acadian element on the island, as well as Irish.
The accents can be divided into three categories: the Western or Scottish Gaelic accent (Inverness, Judique, Mabou, the Margarees), the Industrial accent (Sydney, Glace Bay) and the French Acadian (communities surrounding Cheticamp, L'Ardoise and Isle Madame). There are also influences of the Irish Gaelic accent that can be heard in numerous communities throughout the Island.
Read more about Cape Breton Accent: Western Accent, Industrial Accent, French Acadian Accent, Other Characteristics
Famous quotes containing the words cape, breton and/or accent:
“The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away, and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow.”
—H.L. (Henry Lewis)
“There is nothing with which it is so dangerous to take liberties as liberty itself.”
—André Breton (1896–1966)
“An accent mark, perhaps, instead of a whole western accent—a point of punctuation rather than a uniform twang. That is how it should be worn: as a quiet point of character reference, an apt phrase of sartorial allusion—macho, sotto voce.”
—Phil Patton (b. 1953)