America ’s northerly neighbour is generally take to be its milder , nicer full cousin . While Americans are cheeky and loud , as the collective wiseness distinguish us , Canadians are unfailingly polite . This all-embracing generalization may have some truth to it , according to a young survey of the Good Book used on Twitter .
investigator from McMaster University in Hamilton , Canada ( near Toronto ) examined 3 million geo - tagged tweets to see how Canada ’s Twitter users speak differently than those just over the perimeter . According to Vox , they categorize the top 10 percent of words disproportionately used by Canadians and the top 10 percent used by Americans and find that Canadian Twitter reflects the stereotype : super polite . Canadians tweet lots of prescribed words , say “ thx ” and “ cheers ” a lot , talk about their sports teams ( like the Toronto Raptors and Maple Leafs ) , and of class , often use " eh . "
American Twitter , however , can be a little rowdier . There are disproportionately more swear words in American substance abuser ’ favorite online wording . Canadian tweet about affair that are “ amazing ” and “ beautiful ” and “ great , ” while Americans ' top words are vulgar enough to be censor by theMcMaster University website .
Although Americans , as a rule , probably are n’t ever going to tweet as much about hockey game as Canadians do , it ’s unclear whether these difference only chew over national preferences . The findings could also be a answer of cultural deviation between urban areas with very different demographic .
The researchers take tweets from the relatively affluent , international city of Toronto and surrounding areas , comparing them to tweet in American Rust Belt cities like Cleveland and Detroit . Detroit Twitter users ' pet words might not necessarily muse how citizenry in other American cities like San Francisco , Phoenix , or Boston might talk online , and the Toronto region ’s language patterns might not speculate the same normal as Calgary ’s . To get a fuller pic , it ’d be good to see a wider extract of tweets from various geographic areas in both land .
Regardless , rent ’s acknowledge that while being civilized is praiseworthy , swearing can also be a sign of awell - produce vocabulary .
The results are onlinehere .
[ h / t : Vox ]
