Ottawa Valley Twang is the accent, sometimes referred to as a dialect of English, that is spoken in the Ottawa Valley, in Ontario, Canada. The Ottawa Valley is considered to be a linguistic enclave within Ontario, in the same manner that Lunenburg, Nova Scotia is within the Maritime Provinces. Ottawa Valley Twang originated with the Irish settlers of the valley the 1840s.
The Ottawa Valley 'brogue' is also explored in Ian Pringle, Enoch Padolsky The Linguistic Survey of the Ottawa Valley The American Speech, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Winter, 1983), pp. 325–344. According to Pringle and Padolsky, there are at least ten distinct varieties of English in the Ottawa valley (326).
Famous quotes containing the words valley and/or twang:
“To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–1882)
““Epic poem,—ten thousand lines—revolution of July—composed it on the spot—Mars by day, Apollo by night,—bang the field-piece, twang the lyre.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)