Pickering, Ontario
The Pickering Accent
Pickering sits inside the Canadian dialect area, which covers Toronto, Ontario and most of English Canada. The nearest other area is Chicago, about 51km away.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Pickering sound like
- Canadian Raising: “out” and “about” raise; “loud” does not.
- “Cot” and “caught” sound the same.
- Rhotic R and T-flapping, as in general American speech.
- Canadian vocabulary: “washroom”, “toque”, “runners”, “eh”.
These are the markers of the Canadian accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Pickering has all of them — the full Canadian profile sets out where the region varies.
Pickering against Chicago
Pickering is close enough to the Chicago area that the two get confused. These are the questions where the survey expects a different answer on each side.
| Question | Pickering | Chicago |
|---|---|---|
| Do “cot” and “caught” rhyme in your natural accent? | “cot” and “caught” rhyme | “cot” and “caught” stay distinct |
Dialect areas near Pickering
Is your accent from Pickering?
There is no way to answer that from a description. The test asks 29 questions about the words you use and how you say them, scores your answers against the Toronto Canadian English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.