One of the factors influencing my decision to look for work experience in Canada for my placement year, was that I would have a language barrier to contend with. I could have gone to a whole host of countries closer to home, but not knowing a second language really hindered my options. Canada had the wildlife that I wanted to work with and the added bonus that everyone speaks English.
However, as it turns out, nothing is quite as simple as it seems. Despite not having a language barrier, things like pronunciation and colloquialisms have caused a few issues that I didn't really think about before coming here. Firstly there are a lot of Coyotes here, however for about a month I didn't know what everyone was talking about as they don't pronounce the 'e' like we do in the UK. This lead to a lot of confusion and for a while I thought I would get to see this whole new species, that I had never head about, until I realised that it was just Coyotes.
Another issue I have found is that words don't necessarily mean the same in Canada as they do in the UK. For example the word knackered to me means tired, exhausted. Here it does not mean that. It means drunk. This caused much hilarity when me and the other volunteer were babysitting Angelika's three year old granddaughter and when asked to take her outside to tire her out we responded with "we'll make her knackered". We were met with some very shocked looks and confused expressions followed by "What are you doing to my daughter!?". So lesson learnt, don't assume words mean the same in different countries, even if they speak the same language.
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