Dharma Singh wrote:
[snip]
> Somewhere I read you can't use Canadian$ in the USA? And I don't know
> whether you can use US$ in Canada.
> Please enlighten me.
They happen to have the same name ("dollar"), but depending on where you
go, they're not negotiable. Border states will often take them, and
when the Canbuck was "in the tank" compared to the U.S. dollar, some
U.S. businesses would even take them at par to encourage tourist traffic
from Canada. And of course, Las Vegas, DisneyLand/World, and other
major tourist attractions always ran huge ad campaigns in Canada
offering exchange at par for their package deals. Now that the
Canbuck's achieved parity, most of that's gone the way of the dodo. On
the flip side, in most *major* cities in Canada, you can use U.S. money,
though when the exchange rates were different, you'd take a hit on the
conversion rate; it was always better to go to a bank or currency
exchange and get some walking-around money there.
Chris Crawford wrote:
[snip]
> Didn't know Scotland and England had different money...I though the
UK had
> the same money everywhere in the UK.
It's the same name for the currency (just like Canada), but in the
U.K.'s case, there are reciprocal binding agreements which set the value
such that one Scot pound is equal to 1 English pound. They're
practically used interchangeably (or at least they were when I was last
there in the spring/summer of '07). You know they're fine to use
interchangeably when you ask a waitress whether your Scots pounds are
good in London and she says "Well, if you don't want them, luv, I'll
take them off your hands for you." ;-) She was right, of course -- we
used the two currencies in London and Cambridge without a hitch. Nobody
even blinked.
Moose wrote:
[snip]
> Unfortunately, it was the US$ that slid down, rather than the C$ that
> climbed.
Bit of both, actually, at least according to the analyses of the
financial houses my wife and I use. Canada's dollar is being seen more
and more worldwide as a "petrodollar," and petroleum's a hot commodity
these days. If you wanna buy Canadian petroleum or natural gas, you
gotta have Canadian bucks. (11% of U.S. supply actually comes almost
exclusively from Alberta, the province in which I live.) Said demand
drives up the price in whatever index currency you use, which of course
happens to be mostly the U.S. dollar. And China and India have been
*very* interested in our petroleum, too -- we're a stable supply.
Wayne Harridge (in response to Moose) wrote:
>> They are completely separate currencies of separate countries that
>> happen to share a long border and a language. Eh?
>>
>
> Yeah the accent is often similar, but I've noticed Canadians hate being
> mistaken for Yanks, dunno if the opposite applies.
Depends on the circumstances, I think. When I was in Crete in early
summer this year ('07), there were quite a few U.S. servicepeople at the
NATO base in Chania, and they were occasionally mistaken for Canadians
(or other English-speaking people, particularly Brits -- the Cretans are
like everybody else, and have a hard time picking out accents when the
language is *so* very different from their own). This caused the
Americans much mirth, far as I could tell.
On the other hand, in a bar I was in at Cambridge, the proprietor, a
nice woman, made the faux pas of referring to several patrons
offhandedly as Americans when they were in fact Canucks. When
corrected, she said "What's the difference? You're all the same, aren't
you?" The gent she was talking to simply said, "You're right, of
course. By the way, it's *lovely* here in East Ireland this time of year."
Touché, and ouch. The proprietor turned a gorgeous shade of red and
slinked away. ;-)
As for the similarity of accents, it's got a lot to do with sharing a
common border, similar geographic situations regionally amongst North
America, and our mass media. A little-known fact is that many U.S.
newscast "talking heads" are in fact from Canada. It turns out that
focus group after focus group in the States identified the "average"
Canadian accent as being very "average" American (something referred to
as "mid-continental English," and considered very desireable), so Canuck
newscasters have predominated in certain segments of the U.S. (and
international English-speaking) news markets. This in turn leads many
people to identify the accent as "American" when outside of North
America, though it's more like the default accent of most of
English-speaking Canada.
And "Eh" is largely an affectation we put on when Yanks are present,
'cause they expect it. ;-)
Bob Whitmire wrote:
[snip]
> A college professor slapped me on
> the back and said something like "What's a full-blooded Canadian,
> 'ay?" I accepted the role of well-meaning fool with style and
> dignity, I thought. And they did have a good time with it. But to
> this day I still don't really understand why they all thought the
> concept of a "full-blooded Canadian" was so amusing. I guess we
> really are different.
He didn't say "Eh"? Ye gods. No wonder he couldn't ID a "full-blooded
Canadian" -- he weren't one! ;-)
More seriously, Canada's been built more on immigration by proportion
than even the 'States, and most of it has been much more recent (within
the last generation or two), so other than the indigenous peoples, it is
notoriously difficult to pinpoint a "full-blooded Canadian." I am of
French and Welsh ancestry, and I'm third generation but still tend to
identify more with my French side (but not Quebecois, eh!). I can't
think of many people I know who are fourth generation (though you'd find
more and more of those the further east in the country you travel --
here in Calgary, over 10% of the population is actually expat American,
so it's even more confusing here, but we nevertheless accept it with a
certain amount of aplomb, I b'lieve). It also has to do with the
difference between the American value of "melting pot" (i.e., complete
assimilation into the dominant society) and the Canadian value of
"cultural mosaic" (where the incoming group is encouraged to remain
somewhat "different" rather than to assimilate more-or-less completely).
There is an ongoing, heated discussion in Canada about whether we've
chosen the correct model.
Garth
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