should I learn Canadian English

I had not thought of it in terms of stressed and unstressed syllables but rather in terms of open and closed syllables.

Open syllables (that end in a vowel) have long vowel sounds and closed syllables (that end in a consonant) have short vowel sounds.

For example:

strip > stripping STRIP-PING (closed)

stripe > striping STRI-PING (open)

If we follow this pattern: travel > travelling, "travele" > traveling. Ok, I know "travele" is not a real word, but see what I mean?

RE: Pronouncing traveling "travele-ing".

No, because you wouldn't pronounce:
opening "opene-ing"
vowelize "vowele-ize"
centering "centere-ing"
towering "towere-ing"

Do Canadians pronounce cool and move like kewl and mew (that is, like people from California)?

Do Canadians pronounce no, cool and move like nehw, kewl and mewv (that is, like people from California)?

Californians do that? They didn't when I lived there.

I agree with Ed that "traveling" does not look like "travelling", but to me it looks more like a two-syllable word, "trave" and "ling", rather than "travele" and "ing".

Heather, annoying as it may be, people outside North America do find it extremely difficult to distinguish Canadians from "Americans" because of the overwhelming similarities in the speech of both, which, believe it or not, far outweigh the differences.

Canadians - and no one else - share both heavy rhoticism and most shifted vowels with their southern neighbours. Some other English speakers are rhotic, yes, but almost all their vowels are very different from North American vowels, and their intonation is so different that there is no confusion between say the rhotic English varieties and Irish, or between either of them and the North American varieties.

It may be of some comfort to you to know that most of us northern hemisphere English speakers cannot distinguish a South African from an Australian from a New Zealander, which is a source of annoyance to all of them, and to us, but at least with Canadians and Americans we rarely pick the wrong continent.

I wouldn't say South African resembles Australian or New Zealand much. South Africans with lighter English-speaking accents resemble them more than those with a heavier accent more influenced by Afrikaans. Neither is very similar to Australasian accents though.

As for Australian and New Zealand, they are fairly similar to those who are not familiar with either. Much more similar to each other than either is to South African, which is natural as they are closer geographically. I cannot tell the difference between Canadian and most American accents either, at least not the less distinctive ones (so excluding from the 'deep south' etc).

The normal rule for English spelling has always been that if a verb receives final stress its orthographical consonant doubles with inflections:

"rebutted"
"occurred"

But when the stress is initial the consonant is not doubled with inflections:

"gallop" "galloping" "galloped" etc.
"hiccup" "hiccuping" "hiccuped" etc.
"foster" "fostering" "fostered" etc.

<<If we follow this pattern: travel > travelling, "travele" > traveling. Ok, I know "travele" is not a real word, but see what I mean?>>

What about the majority of English which words that don't add a double consonant with accompanying inflections, tho? "Travelling" suggests final stress (think of "excelling" or "compelling," which follow the orthographical stress rule). Variants such as "travelling" and "worshipping" are exceptions to the regular rule of consonant doubling in English verbs with inflections. This is why they were regularized to "traveling" and "worshiping" as they follow the rule again. I'm not criticizing the irregular forms but I am explaining why they're around. It wasn't a random decision.

The normal rule for English spelling has always been that if a verb receives final stress its orthographical consonant doubles with inflections:

"rebutted"
"occurred"

But when the stress is initial the consonant is not doubled with inflections:

"gallop" "galloping" "galloped" etc.
"hiccup" "hiccuping" "hiccuped" etc.
"foster" "fostering" "fostered" etc.

<<If we follow this pattern: travel > travelling, "travele" > traveling. Ok, I know "travele" is not a real word, but see what I mean?>>

What about the majority of English which words that don't add a double consonant with accompanying inflections, tho (look at list above)? "Travelling" misleadingly suggests final stress (think of "excelling" or "compelling," which follow the orthographical stress rule). Variants such as "travelling" and "worshipping" are exceptions to the regular rule of consonant doubling in English verbs with inflections. This is why they were orthographically regularized to "traveling" and "worshiping" as they follow the rule again. I'm not criticizing the irregular forms per se but I am explaining why they're around. It wasn't a random decision.

Argh sorry for the multiple posts. My connection is being weird (assuming it's not the antimoon site which it could be) so I can't tell when the posts are actually being posted or not. If this site had editing capabilities we could delete such nuisances....

p.s. look at "editing," another example of the regular stress-orthography rule in English.

<<Do Canadians pronounce no, cool and move like nehw, kewl and mewv (that is, like people from California)?>>

Sorry, but that faux-netic spelling is a little vague. That could mean any number of different pronunciations depending on where you're coming from. What do you mean (phonetic transcription would help if you know it)?

<<I am a canadian living in ontario, and I must say I have gotten so annoyed reading these posts! especially some of the people saying that canadians and american sound exactly the same! we dont people! get hearing aids! I know that americans living in the northern states and canadians living in the western provinces may sound similar, but there are still differences! I think the main differences to sum them up, would be like this: americans to me, ( even the ones who live in the northern sates) have a "flater speech sound to me". its kind of like there words are drawn out alot more than canadians. and the other difference, we canadians definately pronounce our "ou" words differentley than americans. anyways, this was all I wanted to say. there are differences!>>

It's important not to generalize about entire countries, because accents don't always follow political boundaries which are sometimes inivisble and arbitrary (i.e., the large stretch of the US-Canada border which follows no geographical boundary but the invisible 49th parallel).

Also, average Canadian and American accents (as much as there are such things), share a common linguistic history and background going back several centuries of constant and mutual impact. Today we continue to see features originating on both sides of the border spreading across (Canadian Raising has been spreading fast especially in the Northern US over the past few decades, for instance) since all a change needs to spread is simple speaker-to-speaker contact. Given the relative similarity of North American accents it's not surprising the uninitiated ear from, say, London, typically cannot distinguish between the speaker from Toronto and San Francisco or Vancouver and Des Moines even tho natives from those areas likely could tell the differences as soon as they opened their mouths. It all has to do with familiarity.

> The normal rule for English spelling has always been that if a verb receives final stress its orthographical consonant doubles with inflections:

I think I've been confused by Afrikaans spelling rules as I'd never though tof stressed and unstressed syllables, only open and closed syllables and long and short vowells. I became confused because the two rule systems overlap to some extent. However in Afrikaans vowels in open syllables are always long and those in closed syllables are always short. Therefore "traveling" looked to me as though the E should be long as the syllable is closed

<<I think I've been confused by Afrikaans spelling rules as I'd never though tof stressed and unstressed syllables, only open and closed syllables and long and short vowells. I became confused because the two rule systems overlap to some extent. However in Afrikaans vowels in open syllables are always long and those in closed syllables are always short. Therefore "traveling" looked to me as though the E should be long as the syllable is closed>>

Oh yeah maybe Afrikaans has confused you a bit. Yeah, from what I know Afrikaans and Dutch orthography are very regular about the open-closed syllable orthographical rules.

** Therefore "traveling" looked to me as though the E should be long as the syllable is OPEN

So "sigaret" (cigarette) has a short E as the syllable is closed. To preserve the short E when adding a syllable to form the plural the final consonant is doubled: "sigarette" (cigarettes).

Conversely "boom" (tree) becomes "bome" (trees) as the second O becomes redundant when the syllable is opened.

So personally, I'd want to spell "gallopping", "hiccupping", "vowellise" etc. "Opening" is so common that I don't think about its spelling, and in words like "towering" the E is so modified by the R after it that to my mind the long/short vowel rule no longer applies as it is neither the short E of "get" or the long E of "seed".