I am ashamed to say I can’t distinguish American and Canadian accents if I meet people or hear them eg Mike Myers and Dan Aykroyd. Same with Kiwi and Oz (sorry OP). Tin ears perhaps unless others do too.

Don’t feel bad - this American usually can’t tell if someone is from one of the northern-tier states or Canada. And many of those snowbirds can’t tell my Texas twang from a Carolina drawl.

I can distinguish various North American English accents: British Columbians sound pretty different from Ontarians.

A giveaway for Anglophone Canadians is their endearing way of saying “aboot” for “about”. It’s hard to miss. I suppose this might be a vestige of the English spoken by the numerous Scots who settled in Canada from the mid-18 century onwards.

lionello - 26 March 2012 09:06 AM

A giveaway for Anglophone Canadians is their endearing way of saying “aboot” for “about”. It’s hard to miss. I suppose this might be a vestige of the English spoken by the numerous Scots who settled in Canada from the mid-18 century onwards.

This is also a feature of a Tidewater accent.  Maryland, Eastern Virginia, and Outer Banks of North Carolina.

It’s pretty easy to distinguish Kiwis and Australians. Kiwis move all their vowels to the back of the throat, thus apple will come out as epple. American and Canadian are a lot trickier. I’ve heard American comics parodying Canadians on shows like SNL but they mainly seemed to be relying on repeating certain words and phrases rather than accent.

There was an exchange in The Flight of the Conchords (HBO) where Kiwi Brett (who co-wrote the script) tells an American fan his name, which went something like:
Brett: Britt.
Fan: You mean like in Britney?
Brett: No, Britt. B-r-e-t-t. Britt.

South African seems even more marked in this regard. Blick for black, etc.

Queen Elizabeth II says en for an. En epple but not like Kiwis would.