TORONTO -- Canadians on social media were quick to accuse a U.S. news anchor of putting the “wrong emphasis on the wrong syllable” Friday night when he referenced Ottawa. But he was closer to the truth than some realized.
In a Friday segment on the Fox News program Tucker Carlson Tonight, the anchor and political commentator said Democratic vice-presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who went to high school in Montreal, was “at sea” when it comes to Abraham Lincoln-era Supreme Court history but could “probably” identify the capital of Canada.
“For the record it’s a place called Ot-ta-wa,” Carlson said, stressing the second syllable instead of the first, which would have been the typical Canadian pronunciation.
Twitter users lit up the site after American reporter Andrew Feinberg posted the clip, calling it “very odd.”
“A ta what now?” wrote one Twitter user. “How do we get him to try ‘Saskatchewan’?” asked another.
But several Indigenous Canadians pointed out that Carlson was actually saying the word correctly, or at least closer to its Indigenous origins, which over time were anglicized in spelling and pronunciation. The word Ottawa comes from the Anishinaabemowin or Ojibwe word “odaawe,” which means “to sell or to trade,” in reference to a trading hub or to traders themselves.
“Over time, it became anglicized and mispronounced because people weren’t always cognizant of the sounds that we make, so odaawe became Ottawa,” said Jeff Monague, an Ojibwe language expert in the capital city, which sits in Algonquin territory.
Though some thought the host may have done so unknowingly, Monague told CTVNews.ca on Saturday that he didn’t think it was unintentional, though it’s unlikely Carlson knows the history of the word.
“I’m sure he’s being flippant,” Monague said over the phone, noting another clip posted online showing Carlson, in 2014, using the anglicized pronunciation for the city.
The Ojibwe pronunciation isn’t well known across Canada. The institution of residential schools in Canada and the outlawing of Indigenous language and culture meant that many Indigenous people grew up without the knowledge that the capital city’s name has its roots in the Ojibwe language.
“But many people are re-learning that language and that history,” said Monague. “There’s a mishmash of people who are just beginning to wake up to and realize that their history means a lot and goes back further than Canada’s history.”
