Canadian English

What do English-speaking Canadians sound like and why? Can you tell the difference between a Canadian and an American? A Canadian and an Englishman? If so, how? Linguistically speaking is Canada a colony of Britain or a satellite of the United States? Is there a Canadian language? Speaking Canadian English, first published in 1971, in a non-technical way, describes English as it is spoken in Canada – its vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, grammar, spelling, slang. This title comments on the history of Canadian English – how it came to sound the way it does – and attempts to predict what will happen to it in the future. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics.

The complexities of the English language can be daunting for even the most fluent speakers, and for Canadians this is doubly so with the mixture of British and American traditions. Almost anyone engaged in formal writing will sometimes need to consult a usage guide for advice, but Canadians have always been forced to choose between a British or an American source. With the Guide to Canadian English Usage, writers will have an authoritative reference based on Canadian sources that provides pithy direction on numerous details of the language. From the indefinite article to zoology, alphabetically arranged entries clarify issues of word choice, punctuation, spelling, and abbreviation. Throughout it offers guidance on Canadianisms, confusibles, difficult expressions, First Nation names, foreign phrases, grammar, inclusive language, punctuation, spelling, and troublesome pronunciations. Each entry explains the problem at hand, outlines a range of prescriptions, and then either recommends a particular usage or reviews the alternatives from which the now-informed reader can choose. All entries feature a wide range of fascinating quotations from Canadian sources. Newly reissued in an attractive hardcover edition, the Guide to Canadian English Usage is the essential reference for any writer, editor, or speaker of English in Canada.

Traces the making of Canadian English, both as concept and global variety, throughout the twentieth century to the present.

New English speakers and writers need words at their fingertips to feel confident, independent, and fluent. Canadian English offers a rich word resource that is small and handy to use in a classroom, at home, or on the go. Students can refer to their own personalized book, which includes extensive vocabulary, along with extra spaces for students to add words.

The English Language in Canada examines the current status, history and principal features of Canadian English, focusing on the 'standard' variety heard across the country today. The discussion of the status of Canadian English considers the number and distribution of its speakers, its relation to French and other Canadian languages and to American English, its status as the expressive medium of English Canadian culture and its treatment in previous research. The review of its history concentrates on the historical roots and patterns of English-speaking settlement that established Canadian English and influenced its character in each region of Canada. The analysis of its principal features compares the vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar of Canadian English to standard British and American English. Subsequent chapters examine variation and change in the vocabulary and pronunciation of Canadian English, while a final chapter briefly considers the future of Canadian English.

Normand Lester, a journalist with Radio-Canada (the French-language equivalent of the CBC) stirred up a hornet’s nest when he revealed that the federal government had secretly funded television’s Heritage Minutes which, in his view, provided a sanitized version of our shared history. He was subsequently, controversially, let go. The Black Book of Canada is his impassioned defence of his native province and an implicit repudiation of the anglophone media’s unfair, yet all-too-common attacks on Quebec and Quebecers. While English Canada may think itself a “just society,” in this highly controversial book – which sold 50,000 copies in French – Normand Lester chronicles English-Canadian intolerance: the expulsion of the Acadians; Lord Durham’s anti-French policies; the hanging of Louis Riel; R. B. Bennett’s funding of anti-Semitic publications; and the internment of Japanese Canadians in the Second World War. Lester argues that the myth of two equal, amicable co-founders of the nation, a myth actively promoted by the federal government over recent decades, ignores the fact that there will always be two incompatible national histories.

This textbook is the only one of its kind to introduce the study of Canadian English in the context of basic concepts of linguistics and sociolinguistics. The book provides foundational information on linguistic principles and on the different branches of sociolinguistics, ranging from the large-scale ‘macro’ study of language usage (the sociology of language, dialect surveys) to the ‘micro’ study of language use (sociophonetics, sociolinguistic variation and change). Each chapter highlights the different ways of collecting and analyzing data, including census data and historical texts, surveys and questionnaires, publically available corpora, and interviews. Mini-projects at the end of each chapter offer hands-on experience with the methods presented in the chapter. In addition to discussing the classic works in the study of Canadian English, this book engages with such contemporary issues as new-dialect formation, language and social identity, and ongoing language change, making it key reading for students taking courses in the areas of Canadian English, varieties of English, language variation, and sociolinguistics.