Whenever I take a break form writing, I feel I owe to write on a heavy subject, something like the English language. There is obviously a lot to be written, as done at English departments (which are of the richest departments here). But I would like to focus on how the spoken language appears to an Israeli coming to Toronto. Learning a language definitely activates some regions in the brain that were long inactive. You can't take communication with other people for granted.
The language in Toronto is not the English spoken in England. They don't even have English language exam at high school. It uses a very limited vocabulary (as these letters show), due to strong commercial pressure to keep everything clear and simple. Heavy British or Irish accent sounds foreign. Another important element that was lost is the famous British humor. They don't want to hurt anyone. So the difficulty in learning English is mainly matching the speed and understanding the true meaning of phrases. These are cultural things you don't learn at school.
Consider the basic Canadian conversation:
Canadian 1: <smile> Hi! <end smile>
Canadian 2: <smile> Hi!
Analysis:
That is a complete, grammatically correct, "Hello world". It has the smile, the greeting, the counter smile, and the counter greeting. No content, but who cares. Note that the smile of Canadian 2 stays after the conversation is over. The fundamental thing to understand is that for the people of Toronto a conversation is an engagement. Why get into this effort when they can enjoy the silence? There are some people in Toronto with a job that nobody is ever talking to them. If you happen to ask them questions, they might end the conversation with "thank you for talking to me".
You might have noticed there were no names mentioned. While in Israel names are sort of public domain, in Toronto they are considered personal property. Most houses don't have family name signs on their door. The number is enough. They will usually not ask for someone's name. He can introduce himself if he wishes, and has the right not to. They have no problem speaking to people whose names they don't know.
Every Israeli would notice that our two Canadians were not talking at the same time. Israelis and Canadians take extreme approaches to the shared channel communication problem. Israelis try to maximize the throughput of the channel by talking simultaneously. While this approach is scalable to more than two people, it requires advanced collision filtering mechanisms. Canadians, on the other hand, take the conservative way. One side compresses the information, transmits, and the receiver side is decoding. That requires sophisticated probabilistic models on the receiving end. In simple words, the listener has to guess the intention of the speaker. So while one side is thinking what to say, and the other side is busy decoding the meaning, it is perfectly fine to have a moment of silence. In that event Canadians would wait. Patiently. Until next month.
