Scarborough, Ontario
The Scarborough Accent
Scarborough sits inside the Canadian dialect area, which covers Toronto, Ontario and most of English Canada. The nearest other area is Chicago, about 47km away.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Scarborough 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 Scarborough has all of them — the full Canadian profile sets out where the region varies.
Scarborough against Chicago
Scarborough 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 | Scarborough | Chicago |
|---|---|---|
| Do “cot” and “caught” rhyme in your natural accent? | “cot” and “caught” rhyme | “cot” and “caught” stay distinct |
Dialect areas near Scarborough
Is your accent from Scarborough?
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.