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Teaching English as a second language. v. t. e. Canadian English ( CanE, CE, en-CA) [5] encompasses the varieties of English used in Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French (20.8%) or other languages (21.1%). [6]
- 20.1 million in Canada (2016 census), about 15 million, c. 7 million of which with French as the L1
- History
- Origins
- United Empire Loyalists
- British Settlement
- Westward Expansion
- Modern Canadian English
- A Unique Dialect
- Pronunciation
- Low-Back Merger and The Canadian Shift
- Canadian Raising
Canadian English owes its very existence to important historical events, especially: the Treaty of Paris of 1763, which ended the Seven Years’ War and opened most of eastern Canada for English-speaking settlement; the American Revolutionof 1775–83, which spurred the first large group of English-speakers to move to Canada; and the Industrial Revolut...
English was first spoken in Canada in the 17th century, in seasonal fishing communities along the Atlantic coast, including the island of Newfoundland, and at fur trade posts around Hudson Bay. Following the transfer of Nova Scotia to Britain under the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), permanent English-speaking settlements were established in that provinc...
Two decades later, following the American Revolution, approximately 45,000 United Empire Loyalists, who had supported Britain during the war, fled to Canada, mostly from the mid-Atlantic and New England states. Their arrival in 1783–84 provided the first substantial English-speaking population in what would become Ontario, Quebec, New Brunswick and...
The next major wave of English-speaking settlement followed the Napoleonic Wars, when Britain faced problems connected with overpopulation and the economic and social consequences of the Industrial Revolution. These problems encouraged many British people to emigrate. Hundreds of thousands came to Canada in the early- and mid-19th century, more or ...
The earliest English-speaking settlements in western Canada also began in the early and mid-19th century, with such settlers as Scottish farmers in Manitoba’s Red River Colony, established in 1811, and American gold prospectors in British Columbia in 1858 (see Fraser River Gold Rush). The West was also dotted with fur trading posts by this time, fr...
More recent immigration to Canada from all over the world, though involving much larger groups of people than earlier periods, has had comparatively little effect on the development of Canadian English, which reached something like its present form by Canada’s Confederation in 1867. With such a large Canadian-born population to blend into, the chil...
Canada’s history of English-speaking settlement might be expected to have created a hybrid variety of English with a distinctive blend of American and British features. This is indeed what we find, together with a few features that are uniquely Canadian. Nevertheless, in the most general sense, the English spoken today by most Canadians from Britis...
The colonial American English that the Loyalists brought to Canada was established in the 17th century, before several of the changes that created modern Standard British English had occurred in southeastern England. In particular, most modern North American English retains the /r/ sound after vowels, in words like start and north, and has the same...
Other phonological features divide North Americans by region. The most important is what linguists call the “low-back merger,” a collapse of the distinction between two vowels pronounced in the lower-back part of the mouth — those of words like lot versus words like thought. These sound different in Britain and in parts of the eastern United States...
Another distinctive Canadian pronunciation pattern is called Canadian Raising. This is a shortening of the diphthongs in words like price and mouth, causing the vowel to be produced somewhat higher in the mouth than in other dialects. (Diphthongs are two-part vowels; in the vowel of spy, for instance, the first part sounds like the vowel of spa and...
Mar 2, 2021 · The term “ Canadian English” is inadequate to describe the country’s linguistic variety — just as we can’t say there’s one true American, British, or Australian English. What’s usually referred to as Standard Canadian English is the language variety spoken by Anglophone or multilingual speakers who were born in Canada and who ...
It has reached critical mass and is now in the position to tell the story of Canadian English and its varieties. 2010 marked a milestone with the publication of Charles Boberg’s The English Language in Canada, the first scholarly overview monograph on Canadian English. The book is a symbol of how far the field has come as a collective effort ...
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Aug 16, 2019 · Examples and Observations. Margery Fee and Janice McAlpine. Standard Canadian English is distinct from both Standard British English and Standard American English. Additions to, and divergences from, the English of the motherland, once derided by genteel British visitors to Canada, are now recorded in—and given legitimacy by—Canadian ...
- Richard Nordquist
Aug 20, 2015 · The eh of Canadian English is not a Canadian invention; it is used in England and elsewhere, but it is used in more different ways in Canada, notably as an emphatic and to maintain conversational ...
Canadian English is a fascinating blend of historical influences, regional idiosyncrasies, and cultural dynamics. Its co-existence with French and its influences from British, American, and Indigenous languages make it a uniquely Canadian phenomenon. While it shares many features with other English dialects, it stands alone in its complexity ...
