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Canadian English is the form of English used in Canada, spoken as a first or second language by over 25 million Canadians (as recorded in the
2001 census [1] (http://www.statcan.ca/english/Pgdb/demo15a.htm)). Canadian-English spelling is a mixture of
the spelling used in the United States and that used in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and South Africa. The spoken language is
much closer to American English, with some French influence.
Spelling
There is no universally accepted standard of Canadian spelling. Canadian
Press (CP) style, which is used by most Canadian newspapers, agrees with some Australian, British and South African usage:
for example, -our (honour, colour, endeavour), -re (centre, theatre) and
cheque, grey, jewellery, pyjamas, storey and sulphur. But in other cases, American spelling is used: for example,
aluminum, artifact, jail, curb, program, specialty, tire, and carburetor. A Canadian would watch a television
program, as in the United States, but would read the
programme at a concert or theatrical performance, as in Australia. A
business-history explanation for some Canadian spelling rules is possible. For instance, the British spelling of the word
cheque probably relates to Canada's once-important ties to British financial institutions. Canada's car industry, on the
other hand, has been dominated by American firms from its inception, explaining why Canadians use the American spelling of
tire and American terminology for the parts of a car.
A plausible contemporary reference for formal Canadian spelling is the spelling used for Hansard transcripts of the Canadian Parliament.
Many Canadian editors, though, use the Canadian Oxford Dictionary (http://www.fedpubs.com/subject/refer/oxfdic.htm), 2nd ed. (Toronto: Oxford University Press,
2004), often along with the chapter on spelling in Editing Canadian English and, where necessary (depending on context)
one or more of the other references listed in this article's "Further Reading" section (http://en.wikipedia.org/pac/Canadian_English#Further_reading).
Accent
The primary aspect is a feature called "Canadian raising," when
diphthongs are raised before voiceless consonants. For example, whereas many
American dialects pronounce the first diphthongs in the words writer and rider the same, a Canadian will pronounce
them (approximately) as
/ɹʌjɾəɹ/ and
/ɹajɾəɹ/ (in IPA transcription). That is, the first part of the diphthong in both words in American
English is ahh as in father; the first part of the diphthong in writer in Canadian English is uhh as
in cut, a higher vowel than the American usage. However, some American English accents, particularly those near Ontario, speak like this. Note also that Canadian
English shares with American English the phenomenon where
/t/ and
/d/ become
/ɾ/ after a vowel and before an unstressed vowel. Canadian raising preserves the voicelessness of
/t/ and the voicedness of
/d/ where it is etymologically appropriate, even where the contrast is lost in the consonant itself.
Similarly, about will be raised from
/əˈbɔːt/, as it is in American "Atlantic" dialect, to
/əˈbaʊt/ ("abuhwt"), or nearly even
/əˈboʊt/ ("aboat") in some dialects. The stereotypical "aboot" pronunciation, lampooned in the American television
series South Park is not usual; the stereotype may derive from an
interpretation of the "aboat" pronunciation as heard by someone who is used to the much lower "abaut" pronunciation.
Anecdotally, the "abuhwt" or even "a-beh-oot" vowels are heard in Ontario and further east, and the "aboat" vowels are heard
in the Western provinces. Also heard are: "can't", in Ontario, almost "kayant," whereas in the west, it becomes more "kahnt."
A recently identified feature (1995) found among many Canadians is a chain
shift known as the Canadian Shift. This is not found in the Atlantic Provinces, east of Quebec; it is only found in Ontario and further west. For people with
this shift, "cot" and "caught" merge in rounded
[ɒ] position. The short-a of "bat" then moves down to [a], while the short-e of "bet" becomes [æ], which is short-a
in other accents. This shift is still a relatively new phenomenon, so not all Canadians have it. And of the ones that do, not all
have the last stage. Canadians without the Shift typically pronounce "cot" and "caught" as an un-rounded
[ɑ], as in the western United States.
There is a tendency to monophthongize the long "a" and "o" sounds,
resulting in
/beːt/ for "bait" and
/boːt/ for "boat" (though this occurs usually in rapid speech). Finally, the broad
/ɑ/ of foreign loan words in words like "drama" or "Iraq" are usually pronounced like the short "a" of "bat":
/dɹæmə/, /ɪɹæk/.
Americans sometimes claim to be able to recognize some Canadians instantly by their use of the word eh. However, only a certain usage of eh (detailed in the article) is peculiar to Canada. It is common in southern
Ontario, the Maritimes and the
Prairie provinces. In some parts of the United States, American
English exhibits features of Canadian English, including Canadian Raising and the use of eh. Canadian accents are sometimes
detected among Michiganders and their northern fellows.
Vocabulary
Where Canadian English shares vocabulary with other English dialects, it tends to share most with American English. For
instance, automotive terminology in Canada is entirely American. Canadians may prefer the British term railway to the
American railroad, but most railway terminology in Canada follows American usage (eg., ties, as well as cars
rather than sleepers and carriages). Given the number of cross-border railways, this makes sense.
However, some terms in standard Canadian English are shared with Commonwealth English, but not with American English.
These include:
- Tory for a supporter of the federal Conservative Party of Canada, the historic Progressive Conservative Party
of Canada or a provincial Progressive Conservative party
- solicitor and barrister for lawyers (although in Canada, a lawyer is usually referred to as a barrister or a
solicitor only in formal and professional usage; the American "lawyer" "attorney" or "counsel" predominates in everyday contexts.
In the British system, the solicitor and barrister are two different people; in Canada, the same lawyer occupies
both roles but will often use terms like "Barrister and Solicitor", "Esq." [as in esquire] or "QC" [Queen's Counsel, an honour
given in some provinces for a certain level of experience] as formal or official titles.)
- bum for the American "butt" (the two words coexist in Canadian English, and bum is most commonly used as a polite or
childish euphemism)
- busker for a street performer
- tin (as in tin of tuna) rather than can.
- arse is commonly used in Atlantic Canada. West of the Ottawa river, ass is more idiomatic.
Several lexical items come from British English, such as lieutenant (
/lɛf-/) and light standard (an obsolete British word for lamp-post). Several political terms are uniquely
Canadian, including riding (a parliamentary constituency or electoral district) and to win by acclamation (to win uncontested).
Like other dialects of English that exist in proximity to francophones,
French loanwords have
entered Canadian English, such as:
Canadian English also has its own words not found in other variants of English. In 1998,
Oxford University Press produced a Canadian English
dictionary, after five years of lexicographical research, called The Canadian Oxford Dictionary; a second edition was
published in 2004. It listed uniquely Canadian words, words borrowed from other languages
and surveyed spellings, such as whether colour or color was the most popular choice in common use.
Uniquely Canadian English words include:
- Allophone: a resident of Quebec who
speaks a first language other than English or French
- chesterfield (also Northern Californian English): a sofa, couch, or loveseat[2] (http://www.bartleby.com/61/94/C0279400.html)
- parkade: parking garage
- garburator: a garbage disposal unit located beneath the drain of a kitchen
sink
- gettone (in Toronto and environs): foosball; pronounced roughly as in Italian
- Grit: a member or supporter of one of the federal or provincial Liberal parties (but not the Quebec Liberal Party)
- Dipper (or 'kneedipper'): a member or supporter of the New Democratic Party
- Blochead: a member of the Bloc Québécois
- Family Compact: a group of influential families who exercised
substantial political control of Ontario during part of the 1800s
- a Robertson: a Canadian square-headed screw or screwdriver
- a 'timmy': a cup of coffee ('Timmy's' being the doughnut chain Tim
Horton's, named for a hockey player)
- trousseau tea: a reception held by the mother of a bride, for neighbours not invited to the wedding
- yogourt: a unique spelling of yoghurt which is used in both English- and French-Canada
There are a few meaning differences between Canadian and American English; for example, to table a document in Canada is to
present it, whereas in the U.S. it means to withdraw it from consideration.
Although Canadians mostly do not share the habit of the British of referring to
gasoline as 'petrol', gas prices do require some awkward translation between the Canadian and American languages. Even before the metrication efforts of the 1970s, the translation of
"dollars per gallon" required not only replacing Canadian vs. American currencies
but also a conversion between Imperial (4.5 l) vs. US (3.8 l) gallons.
When pronouncing letters of the alphabet, Canadians will almost invariably use the Anglo-European (and French) "zed" rather
than the American "zee" for the letter Z. Canadian students add "grade" before their grade level,
instead of after it as is the more usual—but not the sole—American practice. For example, a student in "10th grade"
in America would be in "Grade 10" in Canada. (Quebec anglophones may instead say "sec 5" (secondary 5) for Grade 11.) It should
also be noted that in Canada, the specific high school grade (eg. Grade 9 or Grade 12) or university year is used and not
American terms such as "freshman" or "sophomore". Also, while in the United States the term "college" refers to post-secondary
education in general, the term "college" in Canada has different meanings, referring to either a post-secondary technical or
vocational institutions or to the colleges that exist as individual subsections within some Canadian universities. Most often,
"college" is a community college, not a university. In Quebec, the word "college" is used to refer to CÉGEP. "College student" is Canada might denote someone obtaining a diploma in plumbing; "university student"
is the term for someone earning a BA. The word "school" in Canada also has a broader meaning: it can be used to refer to high
school, community college, educational institute, or university. A Canadian pursuing a Bachelor's degree at university may say
they are "going to school." In the United States, a parent might say "my child is in school at this moment." In Canada, the pupil
would be "at school."
Past participles also tend to be used differently in Canada and the United States. In general, Canadian English speakers will
tend to say "the cookies are burnt"; their southern cousins will say "the cookies are burned."
There is also greater resistance to turning nouns into verbs in Canada. Until recently, many Canadian teachers rejected the
verb to contact.
Adoption of metric units is more advanced in Canada than in the US due to governmental
efforts during the Trudeau era; while Canadians still often use pounds,
feet and inches to measure and weigh themselves, outdoor temperatures, food packaging, fuel and highway speeds/distances are
almost always metric.
The Bob & Doug McKenzie "Take off to the Great
White North" comedy routines, popular in the early 1980s, drew heavily on linguistic
differences such as pronunciation (such as 'Trona' for Toronto or 'brudle' for brutal, eh?) as well as once-obscure historical
terms such as "hoser" or "hosehead" (originally used to refer to gas siphoning on the
prairies in the depression era).
The province of Newfoundland and Labrador,
which was an independent dominion until April 1, 1949, has its own dialect distinct from Canadian English. (See Newfoundland English.) Just as regional accents within Canada have
become less distinct, Canadian English has tended to converge with American English. With each passing generation, Canadian
English has evolved towards a common North American
English.
Regional variation
The English spoken in Toronto is very close to the English spoken elsewhere in Southern Ontario, but there are differences.
Because of the many immigrants who live in the city, among them Chinese, Asian, Russian, and Italian, there are many words
originating from these areas that are added into the language. There is no standard spelling but most follow the -our and -re
spellings. There are also many street slangs imported from America and the Caribbean. Regional variations include:
-
[aɪ] diphthong pronounced
[↑ɪ]
- loss of non-prevocalic r
- faster speech tempo
- use of "Eh?" interrogative
- Newfoundland English is a distinct dialect of
the language with its own pronunciation and vocabulary. Please refer to that article for more information.
- subtle Canadian raising, although in Ontario it is often quite
strong
- in southwestern Ontario (especially rural areas), some speakers also have aspects of the Midwestern US accent, e.g. "not"
sounds like "naht" (
/nɔt/ → /nat/), combined with Canadian raising (see USA below).
- Many speakers in Ontario and the provinces further west have a new chain
shift called the Canadian Shift. (see Canadian English)
- accent is slightly modified to signify sarcasm: "not" becomes a heavily stressed "nat", for example.
- in Ontario, widespread use of Eh? interrogative.
- more frequent voicing of intervocalic s
– in resource, for example
- short a in words like drama; in common with most Canadians, Ontarians and Quebeckers pronounce words of foreign origin
(Datsun, Mazda, etc.) as if the vowels are French.
- in Central Ontario (that is, the region around Toronto) in particular, voiced th
and d are often not distinguished, the two pronunciations frequently appearing together (Do you want this one or dis one?,
for example)
- strong Canadian raising, second syllable of "about" is
pronounced
[ʌʊ] rather than RP
[aʊ].
The main distinction between Canadian (Prairie) pronunciation of this diphthong is in its resolution. Namely, an American
pronunciation resolves the 'a-'sound
[ɶ] (or, alternatively, the schwa sound (
[ə]); please see external source http://www.m-w.com/pronsymbols.htm for explanation of this notation) resolves with an 'oo'-sound [u], as such: 'a
bah oo t'; whereas the Canadian pronunciation resolves with an 'oh'-sound
[ɔ], as such: 'a bah oh t'.
- "sing-songy" intonation
- use of "Eh?" interrogative is found more often in the east of Canada.
External links
Further reading
- Canadian Raising: O'Grady and Dobrovolsky, Contemporary Linguistic Analysis: An Introduction, 3rd ed., pp. 67-68.
- Canadian federal government style guide: Public Works and Government Services Canada, The Canadian Style: A Guide to
Writing and Editing (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1998).
- Canadian newspaper and magazine style guides:
- J.A. McFarlane and Warren Clements, The Globe and Mail Style Book: A Guide to Language and Usage, 9th ed. (Toronto:
McClelland & Stewart, 1998).
- The Canadian Press, The Canadian Press Stylebook, 13th
ed. (http://www.cp.org/asp/thirdLevel.asp?category=books&maintable=cp) and
its quick-reference companion CP Caps and Spelling, 16th
ed. (http://www.cp.org/asp/thirdLevel.asp?category=books&maintable=caps)
(both Toronto: Canadian Press, 2004).
- Canadian usage: Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine, Guide to Canadian English Usage (Toronto: Oxford University Press,
2001).
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