I listen to ABC Radio National’s linguistics program Lingua Franca. A bit dry and academic at times. But I put the kibosh on that last week when hostess Maria Zijlstra interviewed me about Canadian English and Organizing Our Marvellous Neighbours. Three years later, but still.
Speaking of kiboshing, Maria plotzed when I used the word “bupkus.” And Maria was rather interested in Canadian run-on bilingual packaging (“Trademarks and graphic design owned by Procter & Gamble détient les marques et conception graphique”), for which I ginned up a set of Flickr photographs that she probably won’t actually use.
“Bring your purchases to the cash and pay by Interac”
We also had a whole discussion about Canadian-only words and senses like cash and Interac (and debit). (I did not get any points for knowing that the Australian equivalent of Interac is eftpos or EFTPOS.)
Just this morning, in Lynn Coady’s The Antagonist, I found that exact usage of cash to mean variously cashier, cash register, and bank of same.
