I'm Irish.Why do people think I'm Candian?

I don't know if this is the right forum, but here goes:
I'm Irish, from Donegal in the Northwest of Ireland. I'm currently living in the UK and I'm constantly being asked by British people if I'm Canadian. I've never been to Canada or the US and have lived predominantly in Donegal and Northern Ireland, although in the UK for the past 4 years. I have slowed down my speech since I've moved to the UK and think my accent has softened, but where is the Canadian coming from? My sibling who also lives in the UK has the exact same accent so it's not something I've personally conjured up.I need a good, intellectual answer to give to people because constantly having to a say 'I'm not Canadian, I'm Irish' is driving me nuts! Thank you.

I suppose it'll help if you record your voice and post it here so that people can hear what kind of accent you have.

If somebody from Northern Ireland lived in the UK for a few years, they could possibly sound Canadian. The NI dialect actually has a few features that are similar to Canadian--particulrly its lowered or retracted front vowels and the split between long and short dipthongs. Given, the nature of these is much more extreme in Northern Ireland, but if your dialect has "softened" I could see how it might have a slightly Canadian sound.

Thanks for that. Is there any strong evidence that the Irish accent has influenced Canadian accent, so I can argue that Canadian people actually sound Irish, not that I sound Canadian?

The Scottish and Irish most likely had some effect on the Canadian accent. Northern Irish and Scottish dialects would most likely seem related. If you look at this analysis of the speech of Southwest Tyrone, for example:

http://www.students.ncl.ac.uk/w.n.maguire/phonology.htm

'Right' contrasts with 'ride' ([r6it] vs. [raId]) in a very similar manner to Canadian English. The process is somewhat similar, a general distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants that results in the dipthong being 'raised."

People think you're Canadian because you don't like the French.

Thanks for that, Trawicks. That gives me some conversational mileage.

And again, Guest, thank you for your intelligent input.

>>'Right' contrasts with 'ride' ([r6it] vs. [raId]) in a very similar manner to Canadian English. The process is somewhat similar, a general distinction between voiced and unvoiced consonants that results in the dipthong being 'raised."<<

Mind you that such is by no means unique to just Canadian dialects within North America. Such is actually quite common for historical /aɪ̯/ in more northerly English dialects in the US as well today. For instance, here in Milwaukee historical /aɪ̯/ has undergoes Canadian Raising (with an associated phonemic split, actually), being unraised as [ae̯] and raised as [əe̯]. Likewise, historical /aʊ̯/ also undergoes Canadian Raising here (but without any apparent phonemic split), being unraised as [ɑɔ̯]~[ɑ] and raised as [ɐo̯]~[ɑ̝].

Why don't pick up the authentic English accent?

Maybe I'll just invent myself a Canadian persona and have some fun with that!

I'm American, and when I tried to imitate someone's British accent, they thought I was from Ireland. The North American accent and the Irish accent have a lot of things in common. I remember watching an Irish movie, and it took a while for me to realize that the characters had Irish accents. I just thought they were American. This only seems to be the case with certain regions of Ireland, though. Other regions have an accent that sounds so different from North American English that there is no possibility of confusion.

<<If somebody from Northern Ireland lived in the UK for a few years>>

Northern Ireland is part of the UK.

There aren't many people in the UK who could correctly distinguish a Canadian accent from General American, so I'd be surprised if your accent was regularly seen as *specifically* Canadian. Perhaps "Canadian" is a guess based on having some features that are perceived as American but not quite fitting with the rest of it. Some things about accents from the north of Ireland do have things in common with American ones. An unrounded vowel in words like "lot" and a tapped t in words like "better" are a couple of aspects of (at least some) Irish speech that may be seen as "American" in Britain.

<<Northern Ireland is part of the UK. >>

But northern Ireland (specifically Donegal) isn't

I'm quite surprised by this - I have never had any difficulty identifying a Northern Irish accent - to me it's very distinctive - for instance when the word "now" is pronounced - it sounds much more like "noy"! And that's just one of the characteristics of Northern Irish English.

I've never heard of anyone from NI being mistaken for a Canadian, and I've never heard a Canadian sound anything like anyone from NI. To most of us Brits they sound much like the Americans except for the main giveaway - the pronunciation of the "ou" sound in words like "out" and "about".

I shall have to have words with the Canadian barman down the pub I go to sometimes - he may well throw some light on all this. I know for sure that he always wears a small red maple leaf lapel badge no matter what he is wearing, and we all know that that means he is making a statement! ;-)

I've never seen any "I'm not Canadian I'm Irish" badges or teeshirts, or even "I'm not Irish I'm Canadian", and as far as I can remember I've not even seen a "I'm not American I'm Canadian" but with that one a simple red maple leaf emblem does the trick it seems - I know it does for our cute Canuck behind the bar, whose now beginning to sound quite Scottish at times anyway! It makes him even cuter in fact......