Yukon Joe
Registered User
How do you pronounce “hockey”? US players say it with “fake Canadian” accent.
They don't want to sound Canadian, but like a hockey player—a "linguistic persona."
arstechnica.com
So this is a summary of a legit academic research paper. The theory is that as kids grow up and tend more to identify as "hockey players", they wind up adopting an accent (at least for specific words) that is similar to, but not identical, to a Canadian or upper-Midwest accent. This apparently is most noticeable with the word "hockey" itself. They call it forming a "linguistic persona".
I found this fascinating, but as a "real" Canadian I've never noticed myself to have an accent at all. I'd go to the US and people would say "you sound Canadian. Say "out and about"".
So I'm curious if any Americans have ever noticed this phenomenon.