The Thousand Islands are home to two distinct dialects of English, depending which side of the St. Lawrence River you're on.
On the American side, residents speak American English with an accent colored by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (as in Rochester, Syracuse, or Chicago), along with a little bit of Canadian Raising absorbed from north of the border. Essentially, this means that:
the short "a" as in "can" (/æ/) sounds like "eea" ([ɪə]) before nasal consonants /m/ or /n/;
the long "ah" sound in "father" or "God" (/ɑ/) is shifted towards the short "a", ending up as [a] (sounding close to "Gad");
the "aw" sound in "law" or "bought" (/ɔ/) is moved towards an open "ah" sound ([ɑ]);
the "uh" as in "cut" or "mother" (ʌ) has moved further back, closer to where the "aw" sound was ([ɔ]);
the short "e" in "bet" (/ɛ/) is close to, but not quite, a schwa (rather close to the New Zealand short "i", [ɘ]);
the short "i" sound in "milk" or "hit" is closer to the former short "e" ([ɛ]), except in the "-ing" verb ending, which sounds like "een" ([in]).
and the long "i" sound in "right" or "like" (/aɪ/) is pronounced something like "uh-ee" ([ʌj]). This last one also means that locals can still tell the difference between pairs like "writer" and "rider", even if they sound identical to you.
For a sample sentence in eye-dialect: "Oh my Gad, I kyan't believe you wint fesheen at nuyt and cot so mawch!" Honestly, though, it's not nearly as difficult to understand as all this explanation makes it out to be, and unless English isn't your first language it shouldn't give you any trouble. There is little vocabulary deviation from General American; in terms of word preference, locals call sugary carbonated drinks "soda" and when they say "the City", they usually mean Watertown (or Syracuse, if they're feeling daring).
Speech on the Canadian side is much closer to a generalized Canadian accent (with a few regional peculiarities), perhaps best exemplified by Hockey Night in Canada commentator and Kingston native Don Cherry.
In spite of the bilingual French/English signs on the Canadian side of the river (and the French heritage on the American side), actual Francophone speakers in the Thousand Islands region are few and far between, being far more populous downriver in Québec. Pronunciation of French-named landmarks tends to hew closer to actual French pronunciation on the Canadian side, while in the North Country it is heavily localized ("Chaumont", for example, is pronounced "sh'-MOE", while "Frontenac" is "FRAHNT-'n'-ack").
In spite of these wide differences, there are still points of commonality. In terms of weather, "Lake Effect" is heavy snowfall due to the influence of nearby Lake Ontario (though relatively few travelers come to this area during the winter), while "the Ice Storm" was an event in January 1998 that felled many trees and knocked out power across much of the North Country and Eastern Ontario. Be prepared to be outclassed in nautical terminology unless you grew up near a body of water. And of course, don't forget that "the River" is always the St. Lawrence River, no exceptions.
The Most Frequently Asked Travel Questions about Thousand Islands
Where To Stay & Best Hotels in Thousand Islands - updated May 2024
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Thousand Islands Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.
