Comments

  1. Ice Swimmer says

    A bit of colour.

    Most people here would call one of the seven big ones a kanadalaiskanootti.

  2. voyager says

    Ice Swimmer, I love that ‘kanada’ is actually part of the name and the kanootti at the end is pretty cute.

    chigau, I’m not sure about the Swedish, but in Canada we claim the canoe as ours.

    Colleen, no, but I can canoodle.

  3. Ice Swimmer says

    Yes, kanadalaiskanootti the Finnish name for that kind of canoe, perhaps the first ones of the kind here came from Canada. Kanada is Canada, kanadalainen is Canadian, canoe is kanootti (in Swedish canoe is kanot, which is probably why it’s kanootti in Finnish).

    When I hear the word canoodling, it brings up a mental image of a pair making out in a canoe.

  4. voyager says

    Ice Swimmer, there is a saying here that all real Canadians know how to make love in a canoe.

  5. Andrew Dalke says

    The Swedish word “kanot” is broader than the English term “canoe”. It includes also kayaks and outriggers. Those seven big ones in Swedish are more specifically known as a “kanadensare”, which means “Canadian”. https://sv.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kanadensare says they were introduced in Sweden in the 1930s by the Swedish adventurer Harry Macfie who had been a fur hunter in Canada.

  6. Dunc says

    The Swedish word “kanot” is broader than the English term “canoe”. It includes also kayaks and outriggers./blockquote>

    Most English speakers also use the term “canoe” in this broader sense -- it’s only really canoeists and kayakers that that use it in the more precise sense, to the extent that we’ll* often use the term “Canadian” or “Canadian canoe” instead of “canoe” for disambiguation, even amongst ourselves*.

    (* I’m not really sure that I can really say “we” and “ourselves” here, given how many years it’s been since I was last in a canoe…)

  7. Andrew Dalke says

    In Florida, where I grew up, “canoe” meant the Canadian kind, and other styles, like “dugout canoe” or “outrigger canoe” were mostly referred to a “dugout” or “outrigger”.

    A kayak most certainly wasn’t a canoe.

    It looks like it’s regional. The Wikipedia entry for ‘canoe’ gives a definition which excludes kayaks (“open on top”, “single-bladed paddle”) then says “In International Canoe Federation nomenclature used in some European countries such as the United Kingdom, the term “canoe” refers to kayaks,[2] while canoes are called Canadian canoes.”

    People on the Talk page also expressed confusion over the term “Canadian canoe”, with one comments that ‘Internationally, the word canoe means “vessel paddled by a paddler facing in the direction of travel’, and that 100 years ago ‘kajak’ only referred to the arctic boat.

  8. Dunc says

    Sorry, when I said “most English speakers”, I actually meant “most British English speakers”… My mistake. I can’t say anything about American English speakers.

  9. jrkrideau says

    @ 10 Dunc
    While it might happen, I have never heard a Canadian call a kayak a canoe.
    It does not take long for us to teach the newly arrived Brit how to speak English properly though, sadly, some never master the correct pronunciation of “Toronto”.

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