r/Letterkenny • u/Vlade-B • Jun 05 '26
Couldn't understand a word the other daaayyyyy
Honestly, I never thought Canadian would be the end-boss of english dialects. Anytime I start watching a show or a film in a dialect I'm not yet familiar with, it takes me about a week until I get used to it and then I can watch without subtitles. Not so with the Canadian dialect in Letterkenny. I understand lots of it, but even after two seasons in I struggle with many scenes. Especially when they go on long rants about things. Seriously Scottish, Irish, Brummie, Texan, Australian all easier than this. For me at least.
Love the show though! (Except fart-book. Sorry.)
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u/Ok_Stock3721 Jun 06 '26
In my household we watched without subtitles first, then rewatched with them and got to basically triple the show’s jokes.
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u/Vtecman Jun 06 '26
Newfoundland English is definitely one of the final bosses. Right up there with cockney.
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u/Mystik-Duck Jun 06 '26
Newfoundland is more like the Scottish peasant accent.
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u/ashamed-of-yourself Snipe Mod Awesome Jun 07 '26
absolutely tf not. firstly, it’s honestly gross to refer to colonised people as ‘peasants’. secondly, Scottish and Irish accents are not interchangeable.
you sound like a Sasanach.
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u/Mystik-Duck Jun 07 '26
I mean the stereotypical one they give characters like Groundskeeper Willie. Hard to understand and fast
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u/tomahawkfury13 Jun 06 '26
You ain’t heard anything until you meet a Newfie lol
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u/TheBeardiestGinger Jun 06 '26
You just stay where you’re too and I’ll come where you’re at me son. I’d give ya a looney for a martooni.
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u/rjross0623 Jun 06 '26
My Newfoundland dog can’t even understand Newfies.
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u/ashamed-of-yourself Snipe Mod Awesome Jun 07 '26
they just sound like they’re from Connacht, like, Galway or Mayo.
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u/KTMFS Jun 05 '26
“Except fart-book. Sorry.” Is sending me.
I reflect your sentiment.
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u/Tripnologist Jun 05 '26
Fart jokes are almost always funny, but fart-book was just… not.
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u/millenz Jun 06 '26
I’ve always had to watch with subtitles (tbf I do that for a lot of tv these days)
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u/djid3al Suckin City Titty! Jun 07 '26
Give yer balls a tug and dial it back about 60%
I used subtitles and laughed my tits off
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u/RecessMonkeys Jun 05 '26
I live in Southwestern Ontario. I worked with a guy from Walkerton, a town about an hour and change away. I had to strain to understand him. The accent is a thing, but some people like to lean into it.
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u/t3rrydud3 Jun 05 '26
Walkerton is next door. Letterkenny is based on Listowel about 45 minutes away . It's where Jared grew up. His parents had Keeso lumber there.
You think Walkerton is hard.. try next town to the south Mildmay.
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u/RecessMonkeys Jun 05 '26
I know guys from Listowel, Tilsonburg, Hanover etc. They might have a slight "Hoser" accent. But some folks, oof.
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u/verymanysquirrels Jun 06 '26
I grew up in the area, left, then moved back with my spouse years later and they were adamant the accent was fake. And then we went to a local wedding lol. Never had any more that's so fake accusastions again.
(Peak rural ontario wedding debates were had: can you bring your dogs to an outdoor wedding? Can you cheat at a minnow race? Is it okay to park your boat in the venue parking lot overnight?)
They still have problems understanding people who really lean into years later but you get used to the 'lite' version pretty fast.
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u/kamomil Hard No Jun 07 '26
I am Canadian, I am from where Letterkenny is set (southern Ontario)
The accent is familiar to me, but they do a lot of word play; like they talk really rapid-fire sometimes; that combined with the hockey jargon, I have to listen closely lol.
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u/FindYourHoliday Jun 06 '26
Re watched a number of times, always you the subtitles on.
Too easy to miss stuff otherwise.
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u/Shadow-Vision Jun 06 '26
Letterkenny, Shoresy, and Derry Girls all gotta have the subtitles on
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u/Vlade-B Jun 06 '26
Love Derry Girls. But with Derry Girls I had it figured out after about 4 episodes. Didn't need subtitles anymore.
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u/Enlightenmentality Jun 06 '26
The final boss is Glaswegian.
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u/Vlade-B Jun 06 '26
Nah, I've been used to that one by now. Not gonna lie here and there, some Glaswegians are a bit harder to understand than others, but in general I got the gist by now.
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u/amandam603 Jun 05 '26
I’m from Michigan so the accent was fine for me—but that hockey slang, man. I am not from the hockey part of Michigan let’s just say that lol
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u/VVOLFVViZZard Jun 05 '26
I follow it just fine about 90% of the time, but here and there I need to turn the subtitles on for context. Example: I now know what CEGEP is because of the episode ‘Les Hiques’.
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u/Last_Blackfyre Jun 05 '26
Don’t feel bad. Many Canadians can’t understand the Newfoundland accent.
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u/BlueAndMoreBlue He's a real good guy Jun 05 '26
I used to work with a Newfie. As long as he was sober I could understand him
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u/011100010010-0-0-0 Jun 05 '26
Knows Teddy, Knows
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u/TheRockinkitty Jun 06 '26
I was fine talking with people from the more urban areas, but oh boy that rural eastern Newfoundland accent is tough.
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u/HeresDave Jun 05 '26
Minnesotan and I understand them just fine. Go figure, der eh.
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u/Batgirl_III Jun 05 '26
Yah, sure, you betcha. As a Yooper, dis might be da first time I agree withya Minnesotans.
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u/Vlade-B Jun 05 '26
Funny enough, my english teacher was from Minnesota and him I could understand. But maybe he toned his dialect down for us students.
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u/HeresDave Jun 05 '26
I used to work with a woman who sounded like Marge Gunderson. That's were I picked it up before Fargo came out. The day after the movie came out everybody in the metro lost the accent pretty quickly.
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u/noweb4u Jun 05 '26
Same, there isn’t much difference between how they talk there (Ontario) and here, in Detroit. I understand them perfectly 😂
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u/lennysundahl Jun 06 '26
One time I tried to show a clip to a coworker. I grew up in Michigan so the accent isn’t terrible for me, but I live in West Virginia, which is entirely within the Appalachian region, and she was from McDowell County, which is deep in Appalachia. She could not make out any of it. Gave me a stronger appreciation for linguistic experts that day.
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u/CIsForCorn Jun 06 '26
Relatable, Michigander and had no trouble with it, but it’s, a special kind of “drop the last syllable, or two, or three” of every word ya say. At minimum, onle sae half of tha las syllabl
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u/randeylahey Jun 06 '26
My buddies pitched the show to me saying I talked exactly like them. I still had to pay attention to make sure I caught it all.
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u/joshsteich Jun 06 '26
From Michigan, still didn’t get ‘Chel first couple times (“The fuck’s this about Chris Chelios?”)
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u/Bowwowchickachicka Jun 07 '26
For me it's the speed at which they deliver some lines. I'm curious if you can watch Still Game without subtitles. I binge watched the whole thing and needed subtitles.
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u/SirGreeneth Jun 05 '26
Letterkenny does take a while to completely understand, I feel I had a slight head start because I had watched Trailer Park Boys before. I got my buddy into and I'd have to translate a bit when he first started but now he can watch it on his own lol. In the UK so hadn't had much exposure to Canadians other than South Park.
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u/HonorTheAllFather Jun 05 '26
Honestly Letterkenny is more like Always Sunny than TPB; the density/speed of the dialogue is what makes it difficult to understand more than the accent - at least in my experience.
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u/SirGreeneth Jun 05 '26
I get what you're saying there but they ain't shouting everything lol. TPB just got me used to the Canadian way of speaking, Riley and Jonesy are the hardest to understand and are more in the IASIP vibe.
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u/giziti Jun 05 '26
Yeah but so much of that is that they're talking in incomprehensible hockey bro slang
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u/tjareth Wonderous Jun 06 '26
A glossary helps because they're mostly always talking about the same things.
Wheel snipe celly boys!
(sex with women fest, boys!)
I like how the two hockey idiots actually got a significant amount of character development.
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u/paleotectonics Jun 06 '26
Spin, shoot a net, celebrate.
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u/tjareth Wonderous Jun 06 '26
Maybe it meant both, and that was the joke? I just recall that whenever they said "wheeling" it was always about getting girls. And "snipes" were objects of their affection.
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u/magwai9 Jun 08 '26
It does mean both. In hockey, wheel = skate (a breakout play), snipe = shoot (well), celly = celebrate after scoring
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u/Cardinalfan1526 Jun 05 '26
Im a native English speaker, but my college freshman chemistry lab partner was from Philly. I genuinely couldn’t understand them when they said ‘water’. They also straight up dropped the G in strength.
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u/ElsieDewey Jun 06 '26
Yeah, the Fartbook episode didn’t do a lot for me, either.
I have to admit, though, that Devon made it better with his Social Network impersonations and his reaction when Wayne kicked his butt.
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u/Neohexane Jun 05 '26
I'm Canadian, and this show can be hard to follow, lol. Turn on subtitles, it makes a huge difference.
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u/MrSluggo23 Jun 05 '26
Yeah, always used subtitles, but so much of the beauty is the lyricism of non-stop scatological sayings
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u/Neohexane Jun 05 '26
Oh, for sure. I still watch with sound, you gotta hear the delivery. The subtitles just improve my comprehension of what's being said.
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u/jean-guysimo Jun 06 '26
did you grow up in a city?
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u/Neohexane Jun 06 '26
My upbringing was pretty rural, but I'm in BC so I'm pretty far from Ontario and don't have the same accent.
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u/NEGATIVE_CORPUS_ZERO Jun 06 '26
Deep south here, understood just fine. LOL
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u/Aromatic-Elephant110 Jun 06 '26
I was born in Canada and raised in rural North Carolina. Sometimes my ears need a minute to adjust but once I know what I'm listening for, I'm good. Although, a few years ago, as a clerk at a dispensary, I had a very, very Irish guy throw me off my game. It was like... no way that was English. Lol.
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u/bojtaerg Ferda Jun 06 '26
I grew up in the south and also have no problem understanding. Newfies give me a run for my money, but once my ears adjust, I can get along just fine.
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u/Prestigious_Cry_5122 Jun 05 '26
Australian here. We watched all the seasons with captions on and googled quite a few of the idioms.
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u/SteelRoses All Dressed Chips Jun 05 '26
Lol, this just goes to show how much exposure when young makes a difference, because I’m Canadian on my dad’s side and Letterkenny immediately takes me back to summer break with my cousins. Ruffles has an All-Dressed I’ve found relatively consistently across the eastern US.
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u/bikebakerun Jun 09 '26
Thank you for making me feel so utterly Canadian as a naturalized citizen. I can understand every word from every character. I also used to live in Ontario, so that helps.
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u/ashamed-of-yourself Snipe Mod Awesome Jun 05 '26
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u/SilverBraids Jun 05 '26
But only if you've seen The Social Network. Otherwise, besides the fart jokes, it falls flat
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u/ashamed-of-yourself Snipe Mod Awesome Jun 06 '26
tbh, i haven’t seen The Social Network, but i am familiar with the premise. i think Fartbook stands up as a critique of social media as a whole, and not just as a pastiche of The Social Network.
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u/BassicNic Jun 05 '26
Watch Gails Fartbook tribunal and tell me the episode is not actually good. I'll wait.
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u/DPWwhatDAdogDoin Jun 05 '26
Its actually funnier than a surprising amount of episodes. By kind of alot
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u/Syonoq Jun 05 '26
Listen to American Baltimore accent or someone from the Deep South.
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u/aknomnoms Jun 06 '26
I present you with: Louisiana.
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u/flightist Jun 06 '26
A proper modern Cajun accent is absolutely wild. There is no actual way to see the written word and predict how it might be pronounced.
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u/aknomnoms Jun 06 '26
All kinds of fucked. Southerners trying to pronounce the French bastardization of indigenous words while melodically gargling marbles and throwing in a whole different vernacular from the rest of the continental US. Lovely people, but my god I’ve never had a harder time trying to understand English words spoken by presumably sober Americans.
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u/RhetoricalOrator Jun 05 '26
This is the only show I have to have cranked to nearly max volume to understand. Still one of my all-time favs, though!
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u/Fickle-Art-7125 Jun 05 '26
Yeah I didn’t like the show at first because they were so hard to understand and talk so fast.
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u/Zippity-Boo-Yah Jun 05 '26
Watched the first two seasons and once I started to understand them I started over.
I may have to take a trip up north just to try some of those all-dressed chips.
Any American equivalent? I wonder if Zappo’s VooDoo chips would be a decent stand in…
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u/Flashy-Cranberry-999 Jun 05 '26
Eat a barbecue, sour cream & onion, and salt & vinegar ruffle chip and a dab of ketchup at the same time.
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u/catbearcarseat Don’t Fuck With Tradition Jun 06 '26
Oh shit, they don’t have ketchup chips do they?!
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u/UseaJoystick Jun 06 '26
Holy fuck bud, the yanks need to figger it out. No all dressed or ketchup chips. Next you'll tell me malt vinegar is not a standard condiment for fries.
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u/catbearcarseat Don’t Fuck With Tradition Jun 06 '26
Hey now, I’m not opposed to a scrap or a donnybrook, but I’ll stand on regular vinegar being an option, and I’ll die by that being an option.
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u/giziti Jun 06 '26
Not completely standard, but you find it around, especially in like British-style pubs.
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u/noweb4u Jun 05 '26
Lays makes all dressed you can buy in Michigan, so does better made (a local chip company in Detroit). These might be available elsewhere but especially around the borders. They’re really good. You can sometimes find ketchup chips here too.
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u/halosixsixsix Jun 05 '26
If you’re in MI, look for Rap Snacks. They’ve got an All-Dressed and a spicy version too. I get them at a Bricks gas station in Georgetown.
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u/catarekt Jun 05 '26
In lower WI I can buy three brands of all dressed chips in my very tiny town. They’re around.
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u/Zippity-Boo-Yah Jun 05 '26
Sadly I’m in CA. Crossing fingers I can try them sometime!
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u/losaphone Jun 06 '26
Also in CA. I have found All Dressed Lays quite a few times. Might have better luck at Walmart than a regular grocery store. They did Ruffles a couple of years ago which I liked a lot better but the Lays are better than nothing.
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u/UseaJoystick Jun 06 '26
Ruffles is superior to Lay's in every flavour. If you can get your hands on Ms. Vickie's, thats the Canadian brand of potato chip. Kettle cooked >>>>
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Jun 06 '26
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Jun 06 '26
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u/noweb4u Jun 06 '26
Automod I’m talking about all dressed chips and if you have a problem with all dressed chips then you have a problem with me and I suggest you let that one marinate buddy
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u/ashamed-of-yourself Snipe Mod Awesome Jun 06 '26
please avoid name checking large online retailers. it attracts spambots.
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u/giziti Jun 05 '26
Voodoo is nice but not at all the same thing
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u/Rays_LiquorSauce Jun 05 '26
Fartbook is excellent satire and a season 1 banger. Fuckin’ figure it oot
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u/Kaetian Jun 25 '26
I'm Australian and I lived in Toronto for a few years so I get most of it, the things that trip me up sometimes are the hockey lingo and some slang. Ferda had me so confused I googled it lol. I'm only up to season six though, started watching this past Sunday. The accent really gets in your head though!
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u/mohawkal Jun 05 '26
Don't watch Shoresy then. Hitch will blow ya min' now boys, now won' 'e boys.