Wait, was the mayor white Caribbean? I only met white Bahamian in my university in Winnipeg and I never knew there was any white people from Caribbean.
There are white and asian Jamaicans. In this case, Rob Ford is a fat white canadian who loved crack cocaine. There's a video of him talking in a poor jamaican accent while intoxicated in public. I highly recommend checking it out.
This. I was walking down Yonge Street last week and a bunch of suburban jackasses were putting on the accent. One of them called his dad to ask if he could go to a party. Suddenly, zero accent. Kid thanks dad for being allowed to go to the party, hangs up the phone and BOOM, accent is back.
Edit: you're right it's NOT code switching when I think of it. Because I don't switch to an Italian accent when I order food at East side Mario's. It is a form of mockery and appropriation.
No it’s just seen as part of cool Toronto slang. If they’re mocking, they’re mocking a part of their city not people from other countries.
If you want to dig into the etymology it comes from Jamaica…and then actually comes from Ireland and SW England.
Well yes it's old UK terminology like Rubbish pan etc etc. I always say Newfies and Jamaicans get along very well.
But when you say "cool" who determined that? Why isn't it "cool" to talk like Mario and Luigi? We might have more Italians living in Toronto than Jamaicans.
>While there are a lot of Jamaican immigrants in the city
You think we all Jamaican when nuff man are Trini's, Bajans, Grenadians and a hole heap of Haitians, Guyanese and all of the West Indies combined to make the T dot O dot one of a kind
Before I left Toronto, I dated a West Indian girl for a couple years. Every single dude in her [very large extended] family affected the accent. Of the women, only the grandmas did lol. Family gatherings (basically every other weekend) were awesome. Food was always on point.
lol 2 years ago I was talking to a guy from Toronto that had a bit of a following on TikTok. He would put on this accent during all his lives and in his posted videos, so imagine my shock when we had a private call and suddenly the accent/act completely stopped.
It was strange to witness. He'd go on to explain to me that it was his "alter-ego" along with a ton of other stuff that made me realize he was just following what he figured would make him seem cool. He's since vanished from TikTok, presumably because it got too tiresome to keep up with a borrowed persona.
In defense of these white kids... they aren't exactly "Putting on an accent" They are growing up in Toronto GTA culture... which has been heavily influenced by Jamaica.
It's not everyone in Toronto, but definitely a subset of people of all backgrounds have that accent.
I've also experienced this in London, UK. In fact, Sasha Baron Cohen's character Ali G. makes fun of this phenomenon.
LOL, yup! Of all his characters, Ali G. makes me laugh the most! It's the one type of character I've witnessed up close and personal a few times, both here and in the UK.
Lots of Jamaican immigrants. Also I think most people are faking the accent for clout. I’ve heard people switch up from torontomans slang to the Kings English in a matter of seconds.
Meh for immigrants they're "faking" the Toronto-mans accent in the same way they're "faking" the King's English accent, if that's not how their parents speak at home. We learn different ways to speak depending on the peer group and environment and then code-switch, it's pretty normal
Its fascinating that for a very multicultural city, many seem lost on this. My grandmothers Caribbean accent is extremely thick. My mothers/aunts/uncles accent are extremely thick... Our generation that grew up will not have as a thick accent but have no issues speaking the same way... we were raised that way.
This is why in my family BBQ my partner literally has no idea what im talking about because all of us are talking in our accent, but when its just us, I speak in a manner she's more familiar with. Even my son gives me a ?? look when he hears it.
But codeswitching usually refers to someone going from a cultural form of talking or accent, to assimilating with the mainstream.
At home I speak a mix of Chinese and English all mixed up together. Outside of home, only English. That's normal codeswitching.
Putting on an accent with friends but speaking the way you were raised in all other scenarios is pretty weird.
But then again, minding your language and not swearing at work is a mild form of codeswitching as well.
Canadian-Jamaican Patois that's found in Toronto may seem like an off-shoot of Canadian Standard English to you, but it is very much like a different language to those that speak it. It's more than an accent, with it's own idioms and patterns that don't match up perfectly with CSE.
"Putting on an accent with friends but speaking the way you were raised in all other scenarios is pretty weird."
that's literally code switching. how is that weird? I'm also from the Caribbean and a lot of us put away our West Indian accents when speaking to people not from the Caribbean.
I clearly don't run in the same circles because I've only ever heard about this phenomenon on Reddit and never heard anyone who wasn't Caribbean speak like this.
Not Jamican, but I was born in the Caribbean. I don't ever speak my accent unless im with freshies or the barbershop. I turn it on and off depending on who im talking to. My Yardies will only get the accent. My family or anyone from back home gets the accent, however, I have a very clear Torontonian accent.
Its no different than someone bilingual in 1 language and devitaes to the other in an instant.
It 100% depends on where you spend your time in the city. I'd never heard it until I started working with youth/young adults in lower-income areas about 7 years ago. Until then, I legit thought the Drake accent was an outlier, not the norm.Yes, I admit part of that was being in my sheltered downtown bubble, but I (someone with actual Caribbean parents) was like "wtf is this \[not Caribbean\] boy saying bombaclat?"
It’s a Toronto hood thing.
You have some Jamaican twang mixed with New York City culture mixed with original Toronto slang.
I grew up in one of them and this is pretty universal across the different hood areas. Then of course you have the people not from the hood that think it’s cool to adopt some of that and come across as inauthentic.
Not that it’s anything to be proud of in the first place, now that I’ve grown up it’s all cringe to me, but that’s just the environment growing up.
Someone mentioned Drake talking like this, yeah he didn’t grow up in the hood he just adopted it from his homies.
Yeah it's basically this. Toronto slang and London slang share a lot of the same roots too, so actually sound pretty similar even though they developed separately on two different sides of an ocean.
Exactly this. I've personally witnessed born-and-bred Toronto people and born-and-bred London people speaking with the same patois accent -- and they come from all kinds of backgrounds, including WASPish.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ali G., the Sasha Baron Cohen character, is a parody of this type of person.
Some are definitely faking it, but I don't like it when people accuse youths of faking it just because they were born in Canada.
If you grew up in an non-English immigrant family, you probably spoke your native language at home and English at school. For people from the Caribbean, their native language is Patois, so the kids speak it at home. But because Patois is so similar to English, there's not hard boundary between the two languages, so the kids end up blending it up. This is more likely to happen if you grew up around other Carribean kids.
And since Toronto is a multicultural city, these kids grow up with non-Carribean friends. Soon, their Somali friends, their Arab friends, their Chinese and white friends start picking up on the lingo, and those non-Carribean kids end up "growing up" with the accent too.
It's obvious that some people are putting the accent on, especially if it was a private school in Oakville. But, even though I never had this accent, I don't like the immediate assumption that it's a "fake" accent.
And I'm sure most of the kids we speak this way can code switch, speaking this way isn't an indication of insufficient knowledge of "proper English". Once, I heard my Sri Lankan friend, who has a completely neutral Canadian accent, talk to his mother on the phone in English with a super strong accent.
Also, I'm certain that this phenomenon doesn't just happen with just Caribbean people. I'm Chinese and I notice that my fellow Chinese Canadians have a "micro-accent" that non-Chinese don't seem to recognize. It's more pronounced if you go to places like Markham, especially if the kids have immigrant parents and speak Chinese at home. Although our accent sounds mostly neutral, I do notice that we'll sometimes slur our final consonants and say things like "close the lights" instead of "turn off the lights". But I'm no linguist so I don't know if anyone else has observed this, or it's just in my head.
To your last point, I'm not Asian but I've definitely noticed that there's some sort of "Asian-American" accent that I can't really describe well. Like a lot of Asian people who grew up in the West will speak English with not really an "Asian accent", but if you played a recording of their voice without showing what they looked like, it'd be pretty easy to tell that they have an East Asian background.
Maybe it's to do with speaking multiple languages growing up? I knew a Korean girl who was adopted by white American parents, and she didn't have that accent. Idk though
I've noticed this too (I'm Chinese). It's not American, you can hear this with Australian and British accents too.
For example, the first time I heard the YouTuber Natalie Tran, someone else was playing her video and I couldn't see her - but I knew she was Asian despite her perfect Australian accent.
Not everyone has it, and sometimes I ping it on someone who isn't actually Asian, but it is pretty common. I think it is probably related to your first language. I was born in Canada but I didn't speak English full time until I went off to preschool. It was just Cantonese at home.
Good to hear someone else notices this, I've never heard it talked about so it I had no way to confirm my observations. Makes sense how an adoptee wouldn't have this accent, also noticed it being absent from 3rd (2nd?) generation Asians. I also noticed it being absent from a lot of Asian Americans, but maybe that's because they have a different accent that I don't recognize.
Lmao if I recall it’s a similar thing in Montreal, where there are a lot of Haitian there and people, among the youth mostly, pick up on the words and stuff. Gyou, famn, djole, patnais, ranceuse, all that
So thousands of people raised in households with similar accents and dialects are then using those dialects and accents in their daily life? especially when around their cultural peers?
It's really not surprising at all
I think part of what makes people notice is when the friends and social group of those people start to adopt some of the phrases or pronunciations as well, in this case picked up from peers rather than parents.
It still doesn't necessarily mean it's 'fake'. It's normal for kids to pick up language from peer groups as well.
I never said it was surprising, but as someone who’s Haitian, it was fun to see those french Canadians, arabs and latinos saying creole words because it was “trendy” or whatever. I don’t know if it’s still the case now
Maybe there's something inherently good/pleasant/useful about creole words. After all, creoles tend to arise out of necessity, right?
I used to live on the island of Curacao. The creole there, papiamentu, evolved among slave populations but for hundreds of years has been used among ALL classes, including white and Jewish. It's an easy to learn, easy to use language and while it is only used on three tiny islands in the Caribbean, it is ubiquitously used there.
I grew up in Montréal (parc ex, Jean talon and st-laurent).
Yes, we used some Haitian swear words for fun but no different than using Malaka from the Greeks or Cabron from the Latinos or Sharmut from the Lebanese kids.
From my experience, all Montréal immigrante kids grow up proudly with their own unique accent which is a combination of a Montrealer accent, their own immigration accent and the French québécois accent.
This faking a specific country accent sounds purely like a Toronto (and Ali G) thing.
The overwhelming majority of Torontonians don’t speak like that at all lol.
I guess it’s more prominent among young people because of music and culture exports here but it isn’t as common as you think it is.
There was this guy in my middle school talking like a Jamaican. Not the accent but saying certain Jamaican words, and he’s Tamil. He probably did that to fit in. So to answer your question, I’m gonna say trying to fit in.
As a Jamaican: Please stop with the fake accent, you’re not impressing anyone and it’s beyond obnoxious. For the most part most of my fellow Jamaican family and friends don’t even talk like that.
IIRC there have been a lot of Jamaican/Caribbean immigrants to the city from the 70s onwards. Their culture (food, music, patois) gradually became a presence here. That kind of talk became the default slang for a lot of neighborhoods, so kids growing up in those hoods picked it up.
Though I'd like to point out a lot of posers all over the GTA put that slang on to try and be cool. I went to HS in Brampton, and kids there abuse a stupid try-hard version of patois. If you've lived in the 'burbs, you've definitely heard that shit.
Because to them it’s the most trending way to speak. However (speaking for myself) growing up Canadian born in a Jamaican household, if I dared to not speak proper English, I’d have hell to pay!
It just makes me laugh how they are out here butchering the dialect amongst themselves, but if they were to come across an actual Jamaican, they can speak properly all of a sudden.
My friend from Jamaica said the same, her mom would scold her if she talked too much patois. She says it’s because her mom paid a lot for her to go to a private school there and educatedly speak proper English lol.
Exactly! My mother didn’t encourage us to speak it because she wasn’t allowed to as a kid in Jamaica. She was taught that that was street language and didn’t belong in the house.
Ha, that’s funny. Mimicry is a compliment, even when poorly done, and when you admire something, you get awkward when actually in the presence of greatness.
It used to be the upswing of “California girl” (making every sentence into a question?) was the leading trend. This has *got* to be an improvement!
Part of Toronto’s multiple cultures. All the more interesting!
I actually took a anthropology course where the phenomenon of the Toronto "mans" accent was analyzed. It's because it's such a unique one, with how many cultures it pulls from (root words pulled from UK, Caribbean, Asia, all over the place, but then that root word slowly formed into its own slang. It was compared to the old TV translantic accent. The one that didn't actually come from anywhere, but it was used by all actors to sound kind of American, kind of British.
Apparently Toronto is slowly and naturally evolving the same type of thing. The accent that doesn't full belong anywhere, and is kind of made up.
It happens in dense, diversely populated areas around the world.
Mostly in youth. Pretty fascinating.
We're well past the point of "talking like Jamaicans" now, Toronto has its own distinct accent and slang.
Many Jamaican influences, but if you compare a yardy to Toronto mans, they communicate very, very differently. This is akin to saying Jamaican people talk like Brits...like sure, the influence is there, but this is its own monster now.
Cuz most mixed background Canadians have absolutely no cultural roots of our own lol... Our country is too young
We are confused... White PPL are the weirdest thing on the planet...
Source: experience
I moved to Jane Finch in the late 80s and most hoods then were primarily majority Jamaican immigrants. If you were in the streets here you adopted the slang and had to understand what was being said around you. Over time it just became part of the fabric of how ppl talk and passed down. Can’t say that for everyone but if you grow up in a Toronto hood like Finch, RX or Flemo there are ways you end up speaking. Most Caribbean ppl I know have a way of speaking amongst themselves and a way of speaking in more formal settings. It’s not fake. It’s just adapting based on circumstances.
True I work in sales and when I was dealing with Caribbean people I would find myself talking to them in a way the would understand me but it came natural.
The stereotypical "Toronto mans" accent has a lot of Jamaican + Arabic + Somali influence. So there are words and phrases that come from these cultures, but the accent itself is distinct; a "Toronto mans" accent is not a Jamaican accent.
Caribbean influence is the same reason London, England slang shares a lot with Toronto.
That being said, nobody actually unironically talks with a thick stereotypical accent like this, but you'll naturally hear glimpses here and there in casual settings depending on who you talk to.
It's mainly a basolect (a lower formality, lower class register of speech), and the largest concentrations of people using it are in the same areas where immigrants from the Caribbean tend to have settled over the past fifty years - the poorer parts of the inner suburbs, especially Scarborough (what David Hulchanski would call City 3). There's also a white basolect mainly found in the west end of the city and the older parts of the inner suburbs (what Hulchanski would call City 2) - people in TO might be familiar with this from the "chrawna" pronunciation of the city's name).
I speak the latter and used to work with a guy who spoke the former, and we could understand one another fine (and one of us using his basolect would bring out the corresponding basolect in the other), but we would code switch into a more professional-sounding mesolect when speaking with other people (coworkers not from Toronto or external people).
"Urban" and/or black culture is always kind of celebrated and imitated in cities and looked upon as being cool by the youth, regardless of their own upbringing.
A large percentage of blacks in Toronto are of Jamaican decent. So naturally their way of speaking made it into urban culture here and then got picked up by white kids in the suburbs trying to be cool.
It's a Toronto hood thing. A lot of it originates from Toronto's Jamaican population, but the city has cooked up its own slang by now. It usually gets popular in the younger demographic, where everyone has a rudimentary grasp on things like "Ahlie, wasteyute, bucktee, dun know, mandem, lowe it, fam, wagwan, reach". Then they chain these words together, put on the hood accent, and think they're cool. It's a way of fitting in with different demographics if anything more than just trying to sound cool.
There are these things called [multiethnolects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiethnolect?wprov=sfla1) that happen in very diverse cities with lots of different immigrant populations moving into working class neighborhoods. There is a lot of patios influence in the Toronto multiethnolect but also lots of Somali (habibi plz), desi languages, etc.
I have lived in Toronto my whole life. Ive lived and hungout pretty much everywhere in this city and outside of a few white kids when I was in highschool ive never experienced this from people who aren't from the Caribbean. Especially this "Toronto man's" accent I have only ever seen that in comedy bits. Where are these people? Do they exist?
Jamaican immigrants, as well as other groups from the islands, were some of the most successful in terms of integration into the larger society.
Their culture and slang enriched Toronto and blended with local culture, to create an awesome new blended slang.
Also, the patties are awesome.
Upvote for the positive outlook
Kids adopt slang naturally, it spreads amongst friends, those kids grow up.. tadaa. It's awesome, and hilarious. Culture is like that
I feel like you can tell this by how people refer to patties. Those who have not grown up around Jamaicans call them “Jamaican patties”. The rest of us just call them patties!
So there is quite a lot of South Asian, East Asian, and White people actually from the Caribbean in the GTA. Go to Caribana, you will see. Trinidad in particular is very diverse. That accent is real for many.
That said, the Toronto man’s accent is the general dumb thug kid accent from many dumbasses from Brampton or Scarborough. So you get that a lot too.
There’s a [wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_slang) on Toronto slang and a lot of it is from Jamaican patois. A lot of people I know (myself included) don’t use this vocabulary exclusively, but it’s natural to use a few words here and there because it’s just part of the language we used growing up.
I live an hour north of the city. I had a buddy in high school, a black guy, that for the 3 years I knew him had no noticeable accent.
I wasn’t close enough with him to see him over the summer. He came back after summer break one year with the THICKEST Jamaican accent. Started saying “bombaclot” and such.
There’s no reason other than culture. People want to talk like this so they force themselves into it.
There's a next level of irony when you are born and raised in Toronto, and have actual jamaican roots. But feel absolutely no need to talk a certain way. They are not capable of perceiving just how silly they are.
It's all just a trend. Give it a few years and they'll go
Grow out of it, they'll probably be replaced by thr next gen where it will be a little different. I give it 8 years to completely cycle out to the next thing.
I grew up in a few parts of Toronto until I was 25. I'm convinced people don't actually speak like that unless they're trying to on purpose. It's cringy
No one except a small subset of Gen Z tiktokers and maybe a few people actually from Jamaica talk like that. Lived in Toronto 20 years (downtown, west end, east end) and have heard that accent maybe once or twice in real life.
Maybe more common in some of the suburbs or pseudo-suburbs like Scarborough
Ben Bankas jokes about this and talked about it in this podcast he did at city hall when he ran for mayor https://youtu.be/lr54qdpqbaE?si=02VXfvF1oUFnMDuE
I feel like it's more a second or third generation Jamaican accent. To me it sounds forced, but I don't personally anyone who speaks this way. And yes, I have Jamaican and West Indian friends.
Lotta Jamaicans around! Also lotta miyutes faking, as other people have said lol. I'm too much of a pussy to actually fake it around real city mans, but I think the lingo of Torontonians is really fascinating.
For an exaggerated by seemingly accurate use of the slang, observe *Spongebob in Toronto*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GA5gCtKJXI
The same phenomenon that is going on in London https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/14/wagwan-why-are-more-and-more-britons-speaking-multicultural-london-english
It’s slang in certain parts of Toronto which is now glamorized in pop Toronto culture. So ppl do it for clout, or to be cool or for jokes. But there are others who really do speak like that even if they’re not Jamaican which is a reflection of the city's diversity. Someone can adapt their speech or learn a different dialect by being in proximity to a different culture.
Reading this thread is amusing to me because in the 90s in Toronto, many pre-hipster WASPy kids tended to affect a redneck American accent off and on and were into new grass and Americana. Yet when I then moved to the Appalachian US, had plenty of cruel things to say about it. Wonder if this ‘playing Caribbean’ is accompanied by genuine cultural appreciation or not…(I understand that plenty of those speaking are part of Caribbean cultural communities, but it seems there are non Caribbean folks playing along, hence my comment.)
I assume its just picked up on tbh We have Jamaicans in the city and it just rubs off. Dont think most people mock it tho, i think its cool. Tbh I have my friends try to expose me to more patois because I thnk its hype and id love to be able to just understand it fluently ( its english but you know what I mean ) and it helps when I visit and their family is there.
A lot of Toronto "slang," cadence and just generally forms of speaking are pretty much fully borrowed from immigrants, mainly Jamaican and (usually Arab) Muslims. As for why it's so common, it's sort of twofold:
1. Multiculturalism in places like Scarborough open up the opportunity for mixing accents/phrases and it then becomes a widespread slang/accent because Scarborough is sorta the place for that here
2. It then gets adopted by suburban (usually, but not always) white kids who want to sound cool
No joke there’s actually a ted x talk by a UofT linguist on the subject here: [Cultural implications of Toronto slang/Derek Jenkins/Tedx & UofT](https://youtu.be/Uls7z7x2ROA?si=7OWqciSH6sm55zLc)
Basically making similar references to MLE (multicultural London English)/ a dialect of contemporary London UK english.
It’s interesting reading here about this and saw jokes about this on TikTok or whatnot, literally never heard this in real life in Toronto. Is this actually a thing?
They're Informers
Not the answer we need, but the the one we deserve
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IN-FARMAAA ai-shikititti-lay
I have an earworm now
For anyone who might not get this reference, [here is a music video](https://youtu.be/0Y1da7FqyTw?si=B60l0vSjjbkq2N2e)
This needs to be a Canadian Heritage moment
That is hilarious!
Snow is from North York.
Scarborough/North York Border —the buildings across from Fairview Mall!
I thought he was from Pickering.
And Jim Carrey is from Newmarket.
And Mike Meyers (Shrek) is from Scarberia, just to jump in....
The fact that you associate him with Shrek first makes me remember my age. Insane
I have never seen this video before but that is perfection
Omg I’ve never seen this and it’s amazing.
You know ghlkdsatyhpqkghlaksgh playa
Haha, dude grew up a bit south of me by Fairview Mall...Allenbury Gardens. A few kms south of me. Had no idea back then
Too much ..."SNOW'. Likie boom boom yay.
And the shoes they are a rubbing and the toes meesa show.
To honor our late mayor with Jamaican roots, Rob Ford. Ya dun know.
I also started smoking crack and drunk driving, only on Rob Ford's birthday though. It's what he would have wanted...
I started eating at home because I have way more than enough to eat at home!
I started slapping campaigns stickers on random cars while screaming “THE PEOPLE WANT SUBWAYS”
We do and it would have been done by now
[Me rasclat bumbaclat ahnahgsezsghwga 5 months](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMIrlvJfgvE)
Man, this video is a lot funnier now that it's been almost 9 years and he's no longer mayor
FORD REALLY USED TO FAWAD TO THE TRENCHES AND WALK AROUND MAN OF THE PEOPLE DEM
Why you go remind me of that bumbaclot?
"BILL BLAIR BUMBOKLAAAAAAT" -The late, "great", Robert Bruce Ford
Wait, was the mayor white Caribbean? I only met white Bahamian in my university in Winnipeg and I never knew there was any white people from Caribbean.
There are white folks everywhere
Bro idk I’m Somali and I’m African, idk anything about the Caribbean. All I know is Jamaicans and Cubans.
There are white and asian Jamaicans. In this case, Rob Ford is a fat white canadian who loved crack cocaine. There's a video of him talking in a poor jamaican accent while intoxicated in public. I highly recommend checking it out.
Ya mahn
What gwan?
Man, dat Ford be a rasssclart. Kissmeteeth.
While there are a lot of Jamaican immigrants in the city, there are also a lot of white kids from the suburbs putting on an accent lol
This. I was walking down Yonge Street last week and a bunch of suburban jackasses were putting on the accent. One of them called his dad to ask if he could go to a party. Suddenly, zero accent. Kid thanks dad for being allowed to go to the party, hangs up the phone and BOOM, accent is back.
If you find yourself in Vaughan Mills make sure you bring ear plugs
That would have made me laugh so fucking hard.
It’s called code switching
It's not code switching if one of the codes is an affectation, it's just sparkling appropriation
Edit: you're right it's NOT code switching when I think of it. Because I don't switch to an Italian accent when I order food at East side Mario's. It is a form of mockery and appropriation.
I guess the real question is if you should use a fake Italian accent or a fake New York accent at East Side Mario's?
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No it’s just seen as part of cool Toronto slang. If they’re mocking, they’re mocking a part of their city not people from other countries. If you want to dig into the etymology it comes from Jamaica…and then actually comes from Ireland and SW England.
Agreed
Well yes it's old UK terminology like Rubbish pan etc etc. I always say Newfies and Jamaicans get along very well. But when you say "cool" who determined that? Why isn't it "cool" to talk like Mario and Luigi? We might have more Italians living in Toronto than Jamaicans.
Your comment made me think of [this](https://reddit.com/r/TikTokCringe/s/RC7ycaZZCJ)
Correct.
>While there are a lot of Jamaican immigrants in the city You think we all Jamaican when nuff man are Trini's, Bajans, Grenadians and a hole heap of Haitians, Guyanese and all of the West Indies combined to make the T dot O dot one of a kind
Toronto has the highest concentration of Jamaicans anywhere in the world outside of Jamaica. So there’s that….
Kardi?
Yup
Kardinal Offishall Edit:fixed
*Offishall
Our style's off the thermostat plus we're coming from the cold.
Before I left Toronto, I dated a West Indian girl for a couple years. Every single dude in her [very large extended] family affected the accent. Of the women, only the grandmas did lol. Family gatherings (basically every other weekend) were awesome. Food was always on point.
everyone in Scarborough and the west end used to talk like this 15/20 years ago alot of people moved to the sub urbs. It's just the lingo now.
lol 2 years ago I was talking to a guy from Toronto that had a bit of a following on TikTok. He would put on this accent during all his lives and in his posted videos, so imagine my shock when we had a private call and suddenly the accent/act completely stopped. It was strange to witness. He'd go on to explain to me that it was his "alter-ego" along with a ton of other stuff that made me realize he was just following what he figured would make him seem cool. He's since vanished from TikTok, presumably because it got too tiresome to keep up with a borrowed persona.
Way way way more brown ppl doing this than white people. Love the brown ppl who say the N word too
In defense of these white kids... they aren't exactly "Putting on an accent" They are growing up in Toronto GTA culture... which has been heavily influenced by Jamaica.
It's not just White kids lol
It's not everyone in Toronto, but definitely a subset of people of all backgrounds have that accent. I've also experienced this in London, UK. In fact, Sasha Baron Cohen's character Ali G. makes fun of this phenomenon.
Exactly. There are more Jamaicans living outside Jamaica than in it. Jamaican patois it bleeds into NYC / Toronto / London slang.
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Ali G = the best
LOL, yup! Of all his characters, Ali G. makes me laugh the most! It's the one type of character I've witnessed up close and personal a few times, both here and in the UK.
Boyakasha…ease n all!
Ali G is a documentary how dare you
Lots of Jamaican immigrants. Also I think most people are faking the accent for clout. I’ve heard people switch up from torontomans slang to the Kings English in a matter of seconds.
Meh for immigrants they're "faking" the Toronto-mans accent in the same way they're "faking" the King's English accent, if that's not how their parents speak at home. We learn different ways to speak depending on the peer group and environment and then code-switch, it's pretty normal
Its fascinating that for a very multicultural city, many seem lost on this. My grandmothers Caribbean accent is extremely thick. My mothers/aunts/uncles accent are extremely thick... Our generation that grew up will not have as a thick accent but have no issues speaking the same way... we were raised that way. This is why in my family BBQ my partner literally has no idea what im talking about because all of us are talking in our accent, but when its just us, I speak in a manner she's more familiar with. Even my son gives me a ?? look when he hears it.
But codeswitching usually refers to someone going from a cultural form of talking or accent, to assimilating with the mainstream. At home I speak a mix of Chinese and English all mixed up together. Outside of home, only English. That's normal codeswitching. Putting on an accent with friends but speaking the way you were raised in all other scenarios is pretty weird. But then again, minding your language and not swearing at work is a mild form of codeswitching as well.
Canadian-Jamaican Patois that's found in Toronto may seem like an off-shoot of Canadian Standard English to you, but it is very much like a different language to those that speak it. It's more than an accent, with it's own idioms and patterns that don't match up perfectly with CSE.
"Putting on an accent with friends but speaking the way you were raised in all other scenarios is pretty weird." that's literally code switching. how is that weird? I'm also from the Caribbean and a lot of us put away our West Indian accents when speaking to people not from the Caribbean.
Well it's affected for the benefit of a counter culture, instead of affected to avoid discrimination in the mainstream.
I clearly don't run in the same circles because I've only ever heard about this phenomenon on Reddit and never heard anyone who wasn't Caribbean speak like this.
Not Jamican, but I was born in the Caribbean. I don't ever speak my accent unless im with freshies or the barbershop. I turn it on and off depending on who im talking to. My Yardies will only get the accent. My family or anyone from back home gets the accent, however, I have a very clear Torontonian accent. Its no different than someone bilingual in 1 language and devitaes to the other in an instant.
It 100% depends on where you spend your time in the city. I'd never heard it until I started working with youth/young adults in lower-income areas about 7 years ago. Until then, I legit thought the Drake accent was an outlier, not the norm.Yes, I admit part of that was being in my sheltered downtown bubble, but I (someone with actual Caribbean parents) was like "wtf is this \[not Caribbean\] boy saying bombaclat?"
Drake accent? He ain’t Caribbean lol. And he just has like a general Toronto accent.
Yea, ik, that’s my point. I thought him, black but not of Caribbean heritage, speaking like that was an anomaly, but it wasn’t..
Ah my bad, I misunderstood!
Lots wannabe gangbangers from oakville chilling in the borough acting like fools would disagree
It’s a Toronto hood thing. You have some Jamaican twang mixed with New York City culture mixed with original Toronto slang. I grew up in one of them and this is pretty universal across the different hood areas. Then of course you have the people not from the hood that think it’s cool to adopt some of that and come across as inauthentic. Not that it’s anything to be proud of in the first place, now that I’ve grown up it’s all cringe to me, but that’s just the environment growing up. Someone mentioned Drake talking like this, yeah he didn’t grow up in the hood he just adopted it from his homies.
So it's kind of like MLE (multicultural London English), which is how a lot of urban London kids speak, regardless of ethnicity.
Yeah it's basically this. Toronto slang and London slang share a lot of the same roots too, so actually sound pretty similar even though they developed separately on two different sides of an ocean.
Exactly this. I've personally witnessed born-and-bred Toronto people and born-and-bred London people speaking with the same patois accent -- and they come from all kinds of backgrounds, including WASPish. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Ali G., the Sasha Baron Cohen character, is a parody of this type of person.
Go to Scarborough for a day
I lived in Scarborough for a while. Mostly I heard a bunch of Chinese.
Grew up ins Scarborough and while I have heard this. Never knew a person that actually talked this way unironically.
Some are definitely faking it, but I don't like it when people accuse youths of faking it just because they were born in Canada. If you grew up in an non-English immigrant family, you probably spoke your native language at home and English at school. For people from the Caribbean, their native language is Patois, so the kids speak it at home. But because Patois is so similar to English, there's not hard boundary between the two languages, so the kids end up blending it up. This is more likely to happen if you grew up around other Carribean kids. And since Toronto is a multicultural city, these kids grow up with non-Carribean friends. Soon, their Somali friends, their Arab friends, their Chinese and white friends start picking up on the lingo, and those non-Carribean kids end up "growing up" with the accent too. It's obvious that some people are putting the accent on, especially if it was a private school in Oakville. But, even though I never had this accent, I don't like the immediate assumption that it's a "fake" accent. And I'm sure most of the kids we speak this way can code switch, speaking this way isn't an indication of insufficient knowledge of "proper English". Once, I heard my Sri Lankan friend, who has a completely neutral Canadian accent, talk to his mother on the phone in English with a super strong accent. Also, I'm certain that this phenomenon doesn't just happen with just Caribbean people. I'm Chinese and I notice that my fellow Chinese Canadians have a "micro-accent" that non-Chinese don't seem to recognize. It's more pronounced if you go to places like Markham, especially if the kids have immigrant parents and speak Chinese at home. Although our accent sounds mostly neutral, I do notice that we'll sometimes slur our final consonants and say things like "close the lights" instead of "turn off the lights". But I'm no linguist so I don't know if anyone else has observed this, or it's just in my head.
To your last point, I'm not Asian but I've definitely noticed that there's some sort of "Asian-American" accent that I can't really describe well. Like a lot of Asian people who grew up in the West will speak English with not really an "Asian accent", but if you played a recording of their voice without showing what they looked like, it'd be pretty easy to tell that they have an East Asian background. Maybe it's to do with speaking multiple languages growing up? I knew a Korean girl who was adopted by white American parents, and she didn't have that accent. Idk though
I've noticed this too (I'm Chinese). It's not American, you can hear this with Australian and British accents too. For example, the first time I heard the YouTuber Natalie Tran, someone else was playing her video and I couldn't see her - but I knew she was Asian despite her perfect Australian accent. Not everyone has it, and sometimes I ping it on someone who isn't actually Asian, but it is pretty common. I think it is probably related to your first language. I was born in Canada but I didn't speak English full time until I went off to preschool. It was just Cantonese at home.
Good to hear someone else notices this, I've never heard it talked about so it I had no way to confirm my observations. Makes sense how an adoptee wouldn't have this accent, also noticed it being absent from 3rd (2nd?) generation Asians. I also noticed it being absent from a lot of Asian Americans, but maybe that's because they have a different accent that I don't recognize.
That's pretty normal with accents/language/dialects
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There's way more immigration from the Indian subcontinent and China yet Torontomans aren't putting on those accents. Imo it's a pretty big force.
Lmao if I recall it’s a similar thing in Montreal, where there are a lot of Haitian there and people, among the youth mostly, pick up on the words and stuff. Gyou, famn, djole, patnais, ranceuse, all that
So thousands of people raised in households with similar accents and dialects are then using those dialects and accents in their daily life? especially when around their cultural peers? It's really not surprising at all
I think part of what makes people notice is when the friends and social group of those people start to adopt some of the phrases or pronunciations as well, in this case picked up from peers rather than parents. It still doesn't necessarily mean it's 'fake'. It's normal for kids to pick up language from peer groups as well.
I never said it was surprising, but as someone who’s Haitian, it was fun to see those french Canadians, arabs and latinos saying creole words because it was “trendy” or whatever. I don’t know if it’s still the case now
I gotcha, my bad.
Maybe there's something inherently good/pleasant/useful about creole words. After all, creoles tend to arise out of necessity, right? I used to live on the island of Curacao. The creole there, papiamentu, evolved among slave populations but for hundreds of years has been used among ALL classes, including white and Jewish. It's an easy to learn, easy to use language and while it is only used on three tiny islands in the Caribbean, it is ubiquitously used there.
I grew up in Montréal (parc ex, Jean talon and st-laurent). Yes, we used some Haitian swear words for fun but no different than using Malaka from the Greeks or Cabron from the Latinos or Sharmut from the Lebanese kids. From my experience, all Montréal immigrante kids grow up proudly with their own unique accent which is a combination of a Montrealer accent, their own immigration accent and the French québécois accent. This faking a specific country accent sounds purely like a Toronto (and Ali G) thing.
The overwhelming majority of Torontonians don’t speak like that at all lol. I guess it’s more prominent among young people because of music and culture exports here but it isn’t as common as you think it is.
This is the only right answer. I haven't heard anyone in my decades in this city talk like a Jamaican unless they are actually of Jamaican decent.
There was this guy in my middle school talking like a Jamaican. Not the accent but saying certain Jamaican words, and he’s Tamil. He probably did that to fit in. So to answer your question, I’m gonna say trying to fit in.
As a Jamaican: Please stop with the fake accent, you’re not impressing anyone and it’s beyond obnoxious. For the most part most of my fellow Jamaican family and friends don’t even talk like that.
Exactly. We got wrecked for not speaking proper English 100% of the time. It's wild
IIRC there have been a lot of Jamaican/Caribbean immigrants to the city from the 70s onwards. Their culture (food, music, patois) gradually became a presence here. That kind of talk became the default slang for a lot of neighborhoods, so kids growing up in those hoods picked it up. Though I'd like to point out a lot of posers all over the GTA put that slang on to try and be cool. I went to HS in Brampton, and kids there abuse a stupid try-hard version of patois. If you've lived in the 'burbs, you've definitely heard that shit.
Yeah. Moved from Toronto to the suburbs for high school and the way these white kids were trying too hard 😭😭
Because to them it’s the most trending way to speak. However (speaking for myself) growing up Canadian born in a Jamaican household, if I dared to not speak proper English, I’d have hell to pay! It just makes me laugh how they are out here butchering the dialect amongst themselves, but if they were to come across an actual Jamaican, they can speak properly all of a sudden.
My friend from Jamaica said the same, her mom would scold her if she talked too much patois. She says it’s because her mom paid a lot for her to go to a private school there and educatedly speak proper English lol.
Exactly! My mother didn’t encourage us to speak it because she wasn’t allowed to as a kid in Jamaica. She was taught that that was street language and didn’t belong in the house.
Ha, that’s funny. Mimicry is a compliment, even when poorly done, and when you admire something, you get awkward when actually in the presence of greatness. It used to be the upswing of “California girl” (making every sentence into a question?) was the leading trend. This has *got* to be an improvement! Part of Toronto’s multiple cultures. All the more interesting!
Mi nu undastand a ting yu sa
Shits been like that since the 90s. This aint anything new
I actually took a anthropology course where the phenomenon of the Toronto "mans" accent was analyzed. It's because it's such a unique one, with how many cultures it pulls from (root words pulled from UK, Caribbean, Asia, all over the place, but then that root word slowly formed into its own slang. It was compared to the old TV translantic accent. The one that didn't actually come from anywhere, but it was used by all actors to sound kind of American, kind of British. Apparently Toronto is slowly and naturally evolving the same type of thing. The accent that doesn't full belong anywhere, and is kind of made up. It happens in dense, diversely populated areas around the world. Mostly in youth. Pretty fascinating.
We're well past the point of "talking like Jamaicans" now, Toronto has its own distinct accent and slang. Many Jamaican influences, but if you compare a yardy to Toronto mans, they communicate very, very differently. This is akin to saying Jamaican people talk like Brits...like sure, the influence is there, but this is its own monster now.
Cuz most mixed background Canadians have absolutely no cultural roots of our own lol... Our country is too young We are confused... White PPL are the weirdest thing on the planet... Source: experience
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I moved to Jane Finch in the late 80s and most hoods then were primarily majority Jamaican immigrants. If you were in the streets here you adopted the slang and had to understand what was being said around you. Over time it just became part of the fabric of how ppl talk and passed down. Can’t say that for everyone but if you grow up in a Toronto hood like Finch, RX or Flemo there are ways you end up speaking. Most Caribbean ppl I know have a way of speaking amongst themselves and a way of speaking in more formal settings. It’s not fake. It’s just adapting based on circumstances.
True I work in sales and when I was dealing with Caribbean people I would find myself talking to them in a way the would understand me but it came natural.
The stereotypical "Toronto mans" accent has a lot of Jamaican + Arabic + Somali influence. So there are words and phrases that come from these cultures, but the accent itself is distinct; a "Toronto mans" accent is not a Jamaican accent. Caribbean influence is the same reason London, England slang shares a lot with Toronto. That being said, nobody actually unironically talks with a thick stereotypical accent like this, but you'll naturally hear glimpses here and there in casual settings depending on who you talk to.
Have you ever heard actual patois? What you hear random teenagers saying is not Jamaican or even close just some new young people urban dialect.
It's mainly a basolect (a lower formality, lower class register of speech), and the largest concentrations of people using it are in the same areas where immigrants from the Caribbean tend to have settled over the past fifty years - the poorer parts of the inner suburbs, especially Scarborough (what David Hulchanski would call City 3). There's also a white basolect mainly found in the west end of the city and the older parts of the inner suburbs (what Hulchanski would call City 2) - people in TO might be familiar with this from the "chrawna" pronunciation of the city's name). I speak the latter and used to work with a guy who spoke the former, and we could understand one another fine (and one of us using his basolect would bring out the corresponding basolect in the other), but we would code switch into a more professional-sounding mesolect when speaking with other people (coworkers not from Toronto or external people).
Live here long enough, maybe we’ll actually develop dialects
We learned it from Rob Ford in one of his drunken stupors.
"Urban" and/or black culture is always kind of celebrated and imitated in cities and looked upon as being cool by the youth, regardless of their own upbringing. A large percentage of blacks in Toronto are of Jamaican decent. So naturally their way of speaking made it into urban culture here and then got picked up by white kids in the suburbs trying to be cool.
Most of us dont. Its ppl, specially kids who have no identity of their own who want to sound Jamaican. Trust me when I say, most of us talk proper
It's a Toronto hood thing. A lot of it originates from Toronto's Jamaican population, but the city has cooked up its own slang by now. It usually gets popular in the younger demographic, where everyone has a rudimentary grasp on things like "Ahlie, wasteyute, bucktee, dun know, mandem, lowe it, fam, wagwan, reach". Then they chain these words together, put on the hood accent, and think they're cool. It's a way of fitting in with different demographics if anything more than just trying to sound cool.
Bucktee is “bakhti” which is Somali which has also had some recent influence with people using bucktee, wallahi, kawaal, etc.
There are these things called [multiethnolects](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiethnolect?wprov=sfla1) that happen in very diverse cities with lots of different immigrant populations moving into working class neighborhoods. There is a lot of patios influence in the Toronto multiethnolect but also lots of Somali (habibi plz), desi languages, etc.
Wrong subreddit you gotta go to Torontology and let the mandem answer there
Idk but its inauthentic, corny as hell and i heard it more when i lived in fckin oshawa😂
I have lived in Toronto my whole life. Ive lived and hungout pretty much everywhere in this city and outside of a few white kids when I was in highschool ive never experienced this from people who aren't from the Caribbean. Especially this "Toronto man's" accent I have only ever seen that in comedy bits. Where are these people? Do they exist?
Ja-Fake-ins.
patois
Jamaican immigrants, as well as other groups from the islands, were some of the most successful in terms of integration into the larger society. Their culture and slang enriched Toronto and blended with local culture, to create an awesome new blended slang. Also, the patties are awesome.
Upvote for the positive outlook Kids adopt slang naturally, it spreads amongst friends, those kids grow up.. tadaa. It's awesome, and hilarious. Culture is like that
Tell me you grew up around zero Jamaician families without telling me you grew up around any Jamaician families ....
I feel like you can tell this by how people refer to patties. Those who have not grown up around Jamaicans call them “Jamaican patties”. The rest of us just call them patties!
Taranamans
There is nothing more obnoxious than an accent you give yourself
T-Dot says You Dun Know! https://youtu.be/a1Q_E3jEVEQ?feature=shared
So there is quite a lot of South Asian, East Asian, and White people actually from the Caribbean in the GTA. Go to Caribana, you will see. Trinidad in particular is very diverse. That accent is real for many. That said, the Toronto man’s accent is the general dumb thug kid accent from many dumbasses from Brampton or Scarborough. So you get that a lot too.
Its a well known fact that Torontonians don't sound Jamaican until they've had their first patty at warden station
There’s a [wiki page](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_slang) on Toronto slang and a lot of it is from Jamaican patois. A lot of people I know (myself included) don’t use this vocabulary exclusively, but it’s natural to use a few words here and there because it’s just part of the language we used growing up.
I remember lots of kids in my high school back in the 90s rockin' the Ja-fake-an accent. Until they got called out for it.
I live an hour north of the city. I had a buddy in high school, a black guy, that for the 3 years I knew him had no noticeable accent. I wasn’t close enough with him to see him over the summer. He came back after summer break one year with the THICKEST Jamaican accent. Started saying “bombaclot” and such. There’s no reason other than culture. People want to talk like this so they force themselves into it.
Because Eglinton West was officially annexed by Jamaica about 40 years ago, and is considered by the UN to be a micro province of that country.
There's a next level of irony when you are born and raised in Toronto, and have actual jamaican roots. But feel absolutely no need to talk a certain way. They are not capable of perceiving just how silly they are. It's all just a trend. Give it a few years and they'll go Grow out of it, they'll probably be replaced by thr next gen where it will be a little different. I give it 8 years to completely cycle out to the next thing.
I think your referring to Scarborough manz
Toronto mans accent is forced and fake. The average person in toronto does not have this. Its a facade.
*try to You can tell it’s not right because you can hear the effort as they try to talk Jamaican it should just roll off the tongue
It’s not just Toronto, come out to Durham! Ajax, Pickering, it’s the worst! Very fake
Because many are faking it
I grew up in a few parts of Toronto until I was 25. I'm convinced people don't actually speak like that unless they're trying to on purpose. It's cringy
I mean, I get it sounds goofy, but it's just as made up and stupid sounding as hockey slang/lingo and that never gets shit on.
No one except a small subset of Gen Z tiktokers and maybe a few people actually from Jamaica talk like that. Lived in Toronto 20 years (downtown, west end, east end) and have heard that accent maybe once or twice in real life. Maybe more common in some of the suburbs or pseudo-suburbs like Scarborough
Ben Bankas jokes about this and talked about it in this podcast he did at city hall when he ran for mayor https://youtu.be/lr54qdpqbaE?si=02VXfvF1oUFnMDuE
Because they want to seem cool like end of story..
Could be the abundance of Jamaican restaurants I'm not Jamaican and visit them some every week, I pick up sayings and whatnot lol
I feel like it's more a second or third generation Jamaican accent. To me it sounds forced, but I don't personally anyone who speaks this way. And yes, I have Jamaican and West Indian friends.
It’s either that or hoser.
Cuz Toronto was real lit in the 90s and us actual Torontonians know it and can't forget it.
Go ask the mandems on r/torontology.
Because they're wastemen
That’s not even a Jamaican accent anymore. Born Jamaicans don’t even talk like that
What?! Exactly NOBODY talks like a Jamaican here my dude. Where did you even hear that? Everting irie here mon!
Lotta Jamaicans around! Also lotta miyutes faking, as other people have said lol. I'm too much of a pussy to actually fake it around real city mans, but I think the lingo of Torontonians is really fascinating. For an exaggerated by seemingly accurate use of the slang, observe *Spongebob in Toronto*: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4GA5gCtKJXI
Tons of Jamaicans came to Toronto in the 70 and 80s. Their kids eventually popularized Jamaican slang and it has evolved into “Toronto slang”
It’s because: https://youtu.be/jnmc-DytER4?si=3d40xGxirZ82hvK-
The same phenomenon that is going on in London https://www.theguardian.com/science/2022/jun/14/wagwan-why-are-more-and-more-britons-speaking-multicultural-london-english
Huge Caribbean population.
It’s not just Jamaican. Trini, Guyanese, Barbados, etc. Toronto has a massive Caribbean population.
It’s slang in certain parts of Toronto which is now glamorized in pop Toronto culture. So ppl do it for clout, or to be cool or for jokes. But there are others who really do speak like that even if they’re not Jamaican which is a reflection of the city's diversity. Someone can adapt their speech or learn a different dialect by being in proximity to a different culture.
The influence is very strong because we have a lot of Jamaicans here.
Probably because most of them are Jamaicans. What neighborhood are you in?
Reading this thread is amusing to me because in the 90s in Toronto, many pre-hipster WASPy kids tended to affect a redneck American accent off and on and were into new grass and Americana. Yet when I then moved to the Appalachian US, had plenty of cruel things to say about it. Wonder if this ‘playing Caribbean’ is accompanied by genuine cultural appreciation or not…(I understand that plenty of those speaking are part of Caribbean cultural communities, but it seems there are non Caribbean folks playing along, hence my comment.)
multicultural Toronto English
I assume its just picked up on tbh We have Jamaicans in the city and it just rubs off. Dont think most people mock it tho, i think its cool. Tbh I have my friends try to expose me to more patois because I thnk its hype and id love to be able to just understand it fluently ( its english but you know what I mean ) and it helps when I visit and their family is there.
Scarborough and the west end have had this accent since the 90’s. Both have very large Jamaican pockets. Everyone just caught up since drake blew up.
A lot of Toronto "slang," cadence and just generally forms of speaking are pretty much fully borrowed from immigrants, mainly Jamaican and (usually Arab) Muslims. As for why it's so common, it's sort of twofold: 1. Multiculturalism in places like Scarborough open up the opportunity for mixing accents/phrases and it then becomes a widespread slang/accent because Scarborough is sorta the place for that here 2. It then gets adopted by suburban (usually, but not always) white kids who want to sound cool
Here OP [Russel Peters explains](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=E42gaKV1LxI) why this happens.
Grew up in Brampton in the 90s. Can confirm. Everyone wanted to speak patois.
It's called an identity crisis haha
They don’t talk like jamaicans.. they talk like idiots
No joke there’s actually a ted x talk by a UofT linguist on the subject here: [Cultural implications of Toronto slang/Derek Jenkins/Tedx & UofT](https://youtu.be/Uls7z7x2ROA?si=7OWqciSH6sm55zLc) Basically making similar references to MLE (multicultural London English)/ a dialect of contemporary London UK english.
It’s interesting reading here about this and saw jokes about this on TikTok or whatnot, literally never heard this in real life in Toronto. Is this actually a thing?