Yes, the samples of Canadian abusive words given below are deeply, deeply offensive. They are also part of everyday language in Canada, no matter what the thought-police believe. As usual in the preface to a piece containing offensive words, I must remind those readers ever ready to take instant umbrage that I am a humble reporter. I pass on to you how some Canadians speak, not how you might wish them to speak.
Recording and analyzing street speech is a legitimate endeavour for linguists. Those who would forbid it are the same nincompoop busybodies who recently urged President Bush to deny funding for stem-cell research. They are the uncivilized religious fanatics whose toxic ignorance may yet lead us to nuclear winter.
Any impulse you may have in censoring me or this material does not interest or move me in the least. All emails of outrage shall go directly into the dumpster. For the civilized remnant of readers, this current crop of slurs and insults will prove a fascinating sample of both old and new depths of Canadian racism.
ABA is an acronym for ‘Another Bloody Australian.’ This one is heard in Whistler and Blackcomb, ski resorts in British Columbia graced by a large population of expatriate Aussies.
Angie in Quebec is an English speaker.
Bluenose is a Nova Scotian, named for a famous schooner.
Dogan is a Canadian Catholic. It may derive from a common Irish surname or may have been created to sound like a typical Irish last name.
Flatlander is one born in or living on the Canadian prairies, especially a native of Saskatchewan.
A gino is a macho young Canadian man of Italian descent.
Ice mutant among black supremacists denotes a white person.
Ice nigger is an aboriginal Canadian, usually an Inuit.
Mangia Cakes is one Italian way of referring to Canadians. Literally it’s ‘one who eats cake.’
Nish is an aboriginal Canadian, a short form derived from anishnabe, an Ojibwa term for native Canadians. Read a complete column on the aboriginal etymology of anishnabe or anishinaabe by clicking here.
Pepsi or Pepper is used pejoratively among anglophone Canadians and playfully among French-Canadians to refer to a Quebecker. It is said that Pepsi-Cola outsells Coca-Cola in Quebec.
Scuro among Italian-Canadians is a black person. Scuro is Italian for ‘dark.’ Think of our English word obscure from Latin obscurus, from ob- to, against, over + -scurus ‘covered,’ the Latin related to Old High German scur ‘covered place,’ ‘shelter,’ Old Frisian skure ‘barn,’ ‘shed’ and Icelandic skurr ‘sheltering roof.’
Tête carrée is literally a “square head,” a term of mild opprobrium for Canadians of British descent.
Un Tim is among Quebeckers an English-speaking Canadian. It refers to the chain of Tim Horton doughnut shops spread across the country.
Wagonburner is an aboriginal Canadian.
To repeat, these scurrilous epithets and racist insults are used by some Canadians. They are part of the abusive language of Canadian English. Do I, you may ask, long for a day when these gutter words have vanished from the sweet pasturelands of our Dominion? I pine for such a dawn. And, in that rosy-fingered nirvana, wee piggywigs shall fly and one or more of the currently acceptable djellaba-cloaked saviours shall flutter back to this old terra infirma with free Stanley Cup tickets for all of us.
Or perhaps not, dears.
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Should you find the above material too offensive to bear, turn then to my clean, pure and saintly book. In Canadian Words & Sayings I have cleaned up my act.
There are no sexual references whatsoever and all the material can be read to an innocent child of nine or indeed to a repressed nun without raising so much as a blush. Mother Teresa herself returned from the grave just last week to give me her very own personal blessing and imprimatur. There was no blackmail involved...although, I admit, a certain water buffalo is no longer in the barn.
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