Actress Tamara Gorski teaches us how to speak American

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Americans joke about the Canadian penchant for offering profuse apologies.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/02/2013 (4983 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Americans joke about the Canadian penchant for offering profuse apologies.

But maybe it’s not the apology itself that marks us as Canadians, but the way we say: “Sorry.”

Winnipeg-born actress Tamara Gorski suggests that our pronunciation of that word is one of the Canadian giveaways, one that she endeavours to correct in a special workshop she has devised for Canadian actors working on American films.

KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
Tamara Gorski recently returned to Winnipeg.
KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Tamara Gorski recently returned to Winnipeg.

“O” words such as “toast” and “sorry” are giveaways, Gorski says, because Canadians pronounce them with lips and mouths forward.

“The American accent is flat, like a pancake,” she says, offering up an American pronunciation of “sorry” as “sah-rry.”

Gorski offered a mini-workshop in American accents to movie writer Randall King at the Winnipeg Free Press News Cafe in this video.

For more on Tamara Gorski and her amazing career, read about her in the Saturday Arts and Life section of the Winnipeg Free Press.

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