I swear I hear it this way.........

"Cowgary". That's how it is pronounced here. The "l" is absent. If you pronounce it "CaLgary", people know you are from away, as they say in Newfoundland.

But it's not all that different from Montreal or Toronto. If someone says, "MAWN-tree-ALL", you know they are not Canadian. If they say, "Tor-ON-tow", they are not from here. It's "Mun-tree-ALL" and "Tronno". That's the Canadian way of pronouncing two of our major cities.

Language and linguistics facinate me. When I lived in The Valley -- the Ottawa, that is -- it was easy to tell when folks hailed from a small town, such as Almonte or Carleton Place, because they inserted "like" at the beginning of each sentence and "eh" at the end. They also used creatvive words for "said" and "is". A typical greeting might be: "G'Day lad! It be's a nice day, eh!" This might be followed by..."Like I was talkin' to my mum, eh, and, like, my mum goes 'why d' ya buy that dress, eh?'" I loved to tour The Valley of an afternoon just to drink in the local dialect and jargon. So Irish and utterly captivating.

Unfortunately, importing such jargon into the city workplace had its disadvantages. I remember one very bright young woman who worked for me and used Valley speak. She had utterly transformed herself in every other way, but she still spoke with the local twang and inflection. She was professional, beautifully-dressed, well-educated and charming. But when she opened her mouth in a meeting and let loose with...."Like I was doin' the budget, eh, and like we have a friggin' shortfall"...Marilyn was doomed. Before I left for another position, I called her into my office and had a verboten, prohibited chat about her speech patterns and use of language.

"Marilyn, you have everything going for you, but you just cannot speak that way and get ahead." She was shocked, but smart enough to be grateful because, frankly, she had no idea she came across that way. A couple of years after we parted company, I was flipping through the paper and noticed an ad welcoming "Marilyn.... to our accounting office as a senior financial advisor". I was not surprised, but clearly to her credit she had refined her professional tongue. The Liza Doolittle's are still around.