IN SEARCH FOR THE STANDARD – CANADIAN

ENGLISH

THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT• 1608 -Samuel de Champlain established the first

French foothold (Quebec City)

• 1754 - George Washington leads militia forces to push the French out in order to make way for the inflow of British settlers (French and Indian War)

• 1763 – Treaty of Paris - made New France another British Colony. French settlers settle in the Maritimes

• 1774 - Quebec Act decreed the Ohio-Mississippi Valley an are of fur trading that would be governed by Quebec.

• 1791 - Constitutional Act - Ontario (Upper Canada) and Quebec (Lower Canada).

• 1840 - Union Act - uniting Upper and Lower Canada into the Province of Canada.

• July 1st 1867, three British North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and Upper/Lower Canada - Confederation of Canada

DOES CANADIAN ENGLISH EXIST?

• Lilles (2000) questions the very nature of the existence of Canadian English, pointing to an existing myth based on a weakly constructed Canadian Identity, having no standardization in orthography and phonology.

• Sutherland (2000) sees the dialect as a ‘network of regionalisms’ mostly associated with certain areas of the United States

• Howard B. Woods (1993) defines Canadian English as ‘an off-shoot of American English”, assuming that the essence of CE is the linguistic duality of Standard Southern British English

THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

• 5 periods of research: New France and colonization; the American Revolution; Napoleonic Wars, World War I and Stalinist Era.

• English-speaking colonists initially came into Canada after the French were forced to cede their colonies, called Acadie (Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, New Brunswick) to Britain, as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht in the year 1713.

• Table 1 presents the decline of the French population.

Names of Places.

  1749 1758,After the takingof Louisbourg.

1771 After the fall of New France.

Nova Scotia Peninsula 13,000

1,200 1,860

  Isle Royale 1,000 700 920

Prince Edward Island

St. John Island 1,000 6,500 1,270

New Brunswick

District of Gedaïc

600 300 1,101

  Shores of the Gulf

100 500 1,093

  Bay des Chaleurs

100 400 795

  St. John River 200 1,100 1,403

• Canadian colonists show the same blend of dialects as those who came to the Thirteen Colonies and similarly to the way as it happened there, various dialects and accents were homogenized - the roots of Canadian English are found in British English of the middle eighteenth century.

• The inflow of the first Loyalists, mainly concentrated on the Maritimes, as many were eager to flee to Britain via the Nova Scotia ports.

• Settlers from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey and Western Vermont became the first permanent inhabitants of today’s Ontario, and the initiators of future westward migration

• Cowan (1961), Joy (1967) and Chambers (2003) report on a substantial growth of British based population in the period between 1825 and 1860

• Following Cowan (1961), the population of Upper Canada, at that time mostly inhabited by the Loyalists and their descendants, grew form 150,000 in 1824 to approximately 450,000 in the year 1841 and in the same period, Toronto’s population increased form 1,600 to almost 20,000

• Homogenity among urban middle-class Canadian

English dialects resulted from westward expansion – CPR (Canadian Pacific Railway)

Immigration 1871 1901 1931 1961

Total population 3.486.000 5.371.000 10.377.000 18.238.000

Forign-born 585.000. 700.000 2.281.000 2.844.000

Foreign-born % 17% 13% 22% 16%

• “In Canada we find all the dialects of England in full force (Orkin, 1970: 13).

• The first recorded mention of Canadian English is that made by the Reverend A. Constable Geikie (1857) in a speech delivered to the Canadian Institute in 1857, marking it as a ‘corrupt dialect’.

• Geikie’s objections clearly result from the fluid state of English brought by early eighteenth century immigrants, as many changes in pronunciation and grammar had been in progress

• The dominance of American pronunciation was not simply a result of American legacy of Upper Canada, yet by the presence of the American curriculum in schools, eg.: Webster’s spelling book - frequently used in Canadian schools, clearly setting up pronunciation tendencies.

• British immigrant anti-american wave during the first half of the 20th century. This Dainity, a term created by the dialectologist Rex Wilson, is known as the phenomenon of the Anglo-Canadian.

• Post 1950 – decline of Briticisms and growth of

Americanisms (media etc).

THE 7 LINGUISTIC REGINS OF CANADA

Interior Quebec – over 95% French as the mother tongueSouthern Quebec and the Ottawa Valley – 40% English,

with French predominant in governmental institutions and understood by a third of the population.

Northern New Brunswick – 59% mother tongue French, yet forced to a spoken minority by English.

Eastern and Northern Ontario – 70% English Southern Ontario – A rough estimate of one out of forty

gave French as the mother tongue.The Atlantic Region – The four Atlantic Provinces – French

spoken by 5% of the overall population.The Western Provinces – almost entirely settled by

Ontarions and immigrants from Europe; practically entirely assimilated to the English language.

THE HISTORICAL LEGACY – THE DOUBLE STANDARD

• Chambers (2004) - “These double standards are the linguistic legacy of the first two immigrations. Just as those two immigrations shaped Canadian society uniquely, so they left a unique mark on Canadian English” (Chambers, 2004: 7).

THE 4 MAIN AREAS

• Vocabulary

• Pronunciation

• Syntax

• Spelling

The development of Canadian Vocabulary

The Search for Fish:

• The first English-based lexical item in the Canadian wordstock would thus be a fishing admiral, coined in 1718, due to the fact that the English fisherman based their administration on navy traditions

• Indian names became incorporated to the fish that appeared new to the fisherman, such as: qualla, tyee or Chinook Salmon, obviously associated with the Chinook Indian tribes

Bangbelly – (nfld) a pudding, cake or pancake consisting of a dumpling like mixture, fried baked or stewed.

Banking – (nfld) fishing for cod off the southeast coast of Newfoundland.

Fish flake – (nfld) a rack on which to dry fish

Fishing room – (nfld) a lot on the beach used as a base by a fisherman.

Fishing stage – (nfld) a shed near the shoreline for gutting.

Fishing station – a small sheltered cove from which fishing is undertaken.

Fish shed – (Maritimes) fish house.

Fish store – (nfld & Maritimes) – a building where offshore fishermen store dried cod.

Graple – (nfld) a small anchor used to moor fishing equipment

Keg – (nfld) a small barrel used as a buoy for a fishnet

Mud trout – (nfld) the eastern brook trout.

Rodney – (nfld) a small fishing boat or punt.

Salter – (nfld) a member of a pickling crew who washes fish.

Spring salmon – chinook

Squid jigger – (nfld) a weighted line used to catch squid for bait.

Trap skiff – (nfld & maritimes) a fishing boat used in the cod fishery

The journey inland and the fur trade:

• Jacque Cartier’s voyage of 1534 - kanata, (mistaken for the name of the country, though in fact it means village or community). Not until 1849 do we find Canuck, which may be the English version of kanuchsa, the Iroquoian name for a resident of a kanata”.

• The rough and snowy Canadian terrain: bateau, Red River boat, birchbark canoe or snowshoe.

Bay – the Hudson’s Bay Company, or one of its posts or retail stores.Bay man – (hist) an employee of the Hudson’s Bay Company.Bay nody – (nfld) – baymanBastard canoe – (hist) a birchbark canoe used in the fur trade.Beaver Club – (hist)a Montreal social club founded in the 18th C. by members of the Northwest CompanyCamboose – (hist) a large wooden cabin with a central fireplace, serving as a winter shelter in a logging camp.Canot du nord – (hist) a birchbark canoe of the fur tradeExpress canoe – (hist) a reletively small canoe of the fur tradeSpruce Tea – a drink made by boiling spruce shoots.Tripman – (hist) a man hired for temporary duty on a fur brigadeWintering partner - (hist) a stock holding member and representative of a fur trading company.

Westward migration and sports:

• the Free Land Homestead Act was passed, thus the late nineteenth century sees the increase of homesteading;

• Sir John Macdonald created the North West Mounted Police, known today as the Royal Canadian Mountain Police (Scargill, 1977: 28-38). The Mounties, as they are called today, wear characteristic red uniforms, hence the informal expression redcoat is used in reference to them.

• Agriculture: indigenous plant and animal life names were kept, among them “tabcoo, tamarack and caribou”

• By 1891 the Ontario Hockey Association was formed, and in 1893 the Stanley Cup was offered by the Governor General of Canada at that lime, Lord Stanley of Preston, as a trophy for competition by all Canadian teams. Since its beginning…ice hockey has given a variety of terms to the vocabulary: to ice a team (1955), blue line (1931), and red line (1963), and those various infractions: spearing (1963), butt-ending (1955) and boarding (1962)

• http://archives.cbc.ca/IDC-1-41-1546-10384/sports/spirit_of_hockey/clip11

Acadianian forest – the type of forest, characterized by red spruce, balsam fir, yellow birch and sugar maple, found in Nova Scotia and part of New BrunswickArpent – (hist) 1. an old French unit of land area equivalent to 3420 square meters (about 1 acre), the standard measure of land in those areas settled during the French regimeBush farm – (hist) a farm in the bush that has not be completely or properly clearded of trees.Crown reserve – (hist) a portion of land reserved for the Crown as a sourse of revenue free from the control of colonial legislatureIndian agent – (hist) a person appointed by the Appartment of Indian Affaires to supervise government programmesLocation ticket – (hist) a certificate allowing a settler take a pice of land River lot – (hist) a farm lot extending back from a riverSeigneury – (hist) a tract of land held by a seigneurDipsy-doodle – (slang) (from hockey) evade the defending team; an evasive movememnt; a tactic devised to cofuse or outwit. (The gov is doing a dipsy-doodle to us).Dump-and-Chase – (hockey) designating the strategy of play in which a palyer shoots the puck far down the ice and then chases after itHang up one’s skates – to retire, give up (the PM is going to hang up his skates next month).Hockey cushion – a skating rink with hockey boards esp. and outdoor rink of natural ice.Stickhandle – maneuver skillfully around.

As presented in Orkin (1971) and suggested by Lovell (1955), Canadian vocabulary can be divided into the following categories: (1)   Direct adoptions from native American Languages(2)   Loan-words from Canadian French, with Indian antecedents(3)   Spanish-American terms(4)   Borrowings from other languages(5)   Words from the above classes used in combination with English(6)   Words originated in Canada(7)   Geographical names(8)   Figurative expressions(9)   Descriptions of places and regions(10) Abbreviations (11) Everyday words(12) Words replacing synonyms more often used in England: (13) Terms representing different things than in British English(14) Words which have developed additional meanings(15) Words shifted from one part of speech to another.

CANADIAN PRONUNCIATION

• As reported by Bloomfield (1948), Canadian pronunciation forms bare historical relation to the speech patterns of both Northern and Midland speech in the United States

• Woods (1993) - the General American pronunciation system and the Canadian one are coming closer each day, with the British standard diminishing

Canadian Raising

• it was brought to the interest of the general public by the linguist Martin Joos (1941)

• Gregg (1973) attribute it directly to the continuing trend of the Great Vowel Shift, yet Chambers (1989, 2004b) does not fully see relations between the two and treats it as evidence of the Loyalist base of Canadian English, seeing it as coming into use in the early 1920’s.

Chambers defines the process as being characterized by a tendency of raising the vowel, so that : “Phonetically, the onset vowel is mid, back and unrounded” (Chambers, 2004b: 17). The most popular example to illustrate the feature is the about the house example, which phonetically is realized by Canadian speakers as aboot the hoos, yet it need be argued that this is only an illusion. Acoustically, the hearer has the impression of the tongue raised further from its position then it really is

These variants are called raised or centralized diphthongs, because their nucleus is no longer a low vowel.

Therefore, these variants are obligatory under certain phonological circumstances, in this case the obstruent consonants must have voiceless properties.

The appearance of a voiced sound will thus not result in the raising of the vowel. In conclusion, before voiceless sounds the process is obligatory.

The phenomenon initiates as a result of a different position of the tongue in the production of the diphthong. The articulation starts from the mid central position instead of the low

central, with the tongue further proceeding upward

Graph. 1 : The standard [aw] Graph. 2: The raised [aw]

Graph 3: The standard [aj] Graph 4: The raised [aj]

 

unraised raised unraised raised

Ride, lied, tried, vibe, bide, live, arrive, knives, rise, spies, rye, lie, try, buy, vine, pine, mime, lime.

Right, light, fight, reich, pike, tyke, trike, type, pipe, viper, spite, bite, pike, might.

Mouthe, houses, espouse, rouse, cows, bows, thou, bow, how, now, town, down, frown.

Rout, lout, bout, about, pout, tout, doubt, gout, mouth, house, louse, spouse,

• These tendencies also appear in the United States, especially in the area of the Northern Great Lakes Region. This can signify cross-border influence of the two varieties of North American English, or may provide proof of the Loyalist influence following the ideas presented in Chambers(1973, 2004), thus showing that the origins of the phenomenon are debatable.

Other characteristics:

• Walter S. Avis (1956) - a British form was used whenever the word was of limited use, while the General American one appeared to apply to words treated as more general and in common use

• “English-speaking Canada was largely colonized from great Britain and the United States, and Canadian pronunciation could be expected to show the influence of this mixed parentage” (Orkin, 1971: 119)

• Eric Patridge (1951) attributes these tendencies to the educational and social backgrounds of the colonists, reminding that it was less educated men that inhabited North America, therefore the predominant pronunciation would differ form that of the upper class in England.

CBC Handbook for Announcers

 

Recommended AlternativeAbdomen abdo’men ab’domenAddress ‘address a’ddressAlly ‘ally’ a’llyAsia ash-a azh-aBouquet ‘boo-kay bo’kayDecadent dec’adent deca’dentEnvelope en- on-Leisure like ‘pleasure’ like ‘seizure’Often off-n off-enProgram -gram -grumStatus stay-tus statusValet va’lett va-lay’Version -sh- -zh-

Canadian Merging • This is the merger of low back vowels so that CE

has only one low back vowel phoneme, where most other varieties of English have two” (Chambers, 2004b: 17)

cot caughtbobble baubledotter daughterdon dawnstocking stalking

Canadian English pronunciation system will require the same vowel for the words in both columns

The Canadian Shift

• Results directly from Canadian Merging• The Canadian Shift results allows speakers

to retract the low-front vowel ash to a much more central position.

• ... half a pack a day ...

‘Rhoticity’ and alveolar flapping

• Generally, Canadian English shares ‘rhoticity’ and alveolar flapping with American English, however research has come across the phenomenon of ‘r-dropping’ in certain areas of Nova Scotia. Woods (1993) has also observed that flapping seems to be age-based. In his studies he arrived at the conclusion that younger Canadians appear to be more likely to use a flap in the place of an alveolar stop, than the older generation. Take as an example the word Toronto.

Canadian vowel space

• The vowel space of Canadian English is further distinct in that the entire system is situated slightly farther back in the oral tract. That is, Canadian back vowels are pronounced with the tongue bunched slightly behind where it would be in British and American dialects

• This results in the monophthongal nature of Canadian vowels. As a result, in circumstances where Standard English requires the production of a diphthong, the Canadian tendency is towards monophthongization of the vowel

• "...some nineteen sixties commando show that my dad used to watch, or they've got Tour of Duty..."

• "People that you see rushing home..." • "There’s not a day I don’t try..."

Canadian ‘/a/ natavization’

• The process in which foreign words with low vowels, such as pasta or taco, are pronounced with the low-front vowel ash, yet as mentioned earlier, the sound is brought to a much more central position

• This pattern is quite variable

PLACES Acapulco, Basque, Colorado, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nevada, Slavic, Slovakia, Tejano, Vietnam, Yokohama, Yugoslavia

NAMES Assad, Barak, Chirac, Dalai Lama, Delgado, Franco, Giuliani, Keanu, Modano, Natasha, Rebagliati, Tania

FOODS avocado, bratwurst, cilantro, goulash, nacho, pasta, pecan, pistachio, souvlaki, taco

PRODUCTS

atsun, Fiat, Lada, Mazda, Movado, Nissan, Yahoo!

OTHER afficionado, bravo, drama, gulag, llama, nirvana, pinata, plaza, pyjamas, regatta, saga, soprano, strata, dachshund, gelato, lava, Vietnam, Yugoslavia

SYNTAX

• In terms of morpho-syntactic relations Canadian English generally conforms to world English standards, although Orkin (1971) argues that variation might be observed not on the regional but rather on the social level.

Choice of prepositions

• Although in many cases Canadians choose the American version, there are examples of deviation from the standard:

• sick to my stomach : : at, in and of. • A Canadian live on Blank Street like an American,

he says due to instead of owing to and assures his listeners that there is nothing to it (Br. nothing in it). He often looks forward like an American taking his first vacation in two years (Br. First holiday for two years).

The ‘eh’ tag• Allen (1959) sees eh as thus having a uniquely Canadian character.

The tag can be used in the interrogative, in the narrative or quite simply as a typical greeting

• You like it, eh? - interrogative• We had pizza, eh and beer - narrative• How’s it going, eh - greeting

• Avis (1972) eh did not originate in Canada, and there is nothing characteristically Canadian about it, since it is also shared with British speakers, nevertheless Canadians employ it in contexts where no other speakers would use it, which deeply gives it a Canadian sense. The term was widely popularized through the television shows of Bob and Doug Mackenzie in the 1970’s and Rick Moranis in the 1980’s. The overuse of the tag thus became a marker of Canadian speech.

The ever exclamation

• The meaning remains emphatic referring simply to something happening habitually. As a result, inversion is required or occasional do-support, yet there are no instances of interrogation (Chambers, 2004b: 19).

• is he ever cleaver; • do you ever know much about this software • are they ever so good to us

The cep’for construction

• It is often used to introduce a subordinate clause, therefore it functions as a complementizer.

• The construction results from the phonological reduction of except for.

• I would help you, cep’fer I have no time• He can give you the money cept’fer you need to

come and get it yourself• It is a good idea cep’fer she has noone to help her

The after + present participle structure

• It is rather a regional than a national standard.

• In this case, the standard world English present perfect tense and an adverbial to indicate an action, which has been completed fairly recently, is supplanted by the presented structure

• He’s after coming from the mainland• He’s after telling me all about it

The –as well structure

• This refers to seeing the adverbial phrase as a content linking device between two sentences

• He told Mary to be careful. As well, he asked all of us to help her

The positive anymore • Chambers and Trudgill, (1991) - a construction

that appears regionally in areas of Southern Ontario and in the West of Canada

• This construction involves using the adverbial in a positive context, where normally it appears in negative contexts

• John listens to rock a lot any more. In this case, the adverbial simply means frequently and bears the implication that previously he did not.

• He complains a lot anymore• Anymore, they usually call it ‘cottage cheese’• War, anymore, is genocide

CANADIAN SPELLING• Orkin (1971) - it may be said that the British spelling

system remains mandatory on the so-called ‘official’ level, that is on the governmental level. This dates to Canada’s first PM who obliged government officials to incorporate British spelling into their correspondence.

• This pattern was then endorsed in 1931 by The Royal Society of Canada, The Canadian Historical Association and the Canadian Geographical Society (Mencken, 1936: 349-350)

• Chambers (1987) notes that: “Our public presses do not offer much guidance. On the contrary, their inconsistency reflects the general condition”

Some generalizations• The –our spelling (instead of or) - parlour, honour,

colour or favour

• The –re spelling: sombre, theatre or fibre

• The –ce spelling in items as: practice or defence when they appear as nouns, whereas when their syntactic function is that of a verb, these will have the –se ending as in: license or practise

• Canadian spelling incorporates different spelling for homonyms in order to sustain the different meanings

CONCLUSIONS• CE & AE vs. General North American

• language standards, standard dialect and standard accent (accepted norms for the use of language; the grammar and lexis of educated usage; pronunciation)

• • (Chambers, 1987) - “…we will find that it is not much

different from the Standard dialect of the United States or England…” as in terms of grammar and vocabulary Canadians use identical sentence structures and basic vocabulary. Nevertheless, there are elements which differentiate the dialect from other standards, which in turn makes it uniquely Canadian

THIS CONCLUDES THE PRESENTATION

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION