The fact that you lumped Canada together with Boston in terms of pronunciation is almost enough reason to discount everything else you've written, no matter how articulate.

If you want pronunciation with flare you should be thinking Boston and New York. There is no "aboot" in "Canada." You might be thinking of a few fishing towns in the Newfoundland perhaps. Then of course you may very well have been corrupted by South Park...

If there was ever a more non-standardised language than English, I've not seen it. I'm still amazed that so many people can pick the language up at a later age (my parents for example). I started thinking about it the other night and was fairly amazed that I managed to pick it up and still hold on to Portuguese (I moved here just before the age of 4, not knowing a single word of English, but fluent beyond my age in Portuguese).

Should I bring up the point about the "t" being dropped in "often" - it does go against one of the points you made in your speech from the ass-podium.

Bruno

Proud not to know a preposition from a supposition from a contradiction.