1.3.1. Canadian English

J. Pringle in his work “The Concept of Dialect and the Study of Canadian English” writes that Canadian English is a solid part of the American branch of language. It shares most of the linguistic characteristics of American English yet there are important features of Canadian English which distinguish it as an independent subvariety of American English. Canadians have positive view of the US and there are some phenomena in common:

● syllable reduction:

E.g.: lion=line, warren=warn

● fewer high diphthongs in the words “about”, “like” /Qu/ - /Au/

● Canadians use more American morphological and lexical forms.

Pro-British attitudes correlate well with the preservation of vowel distinction before [r] such as “spear it” /'spIqrIt/ vs /'spirit/.

Pro-Canadian attitudes mean relatively more leveling of the vowel distinctions, more loss of /j/.

E.g.: tune /tju:n/ - /tu:n/

75% of Canadians say /zed/ instead /zi:/, 75% - chesterfield for sofa, 2/3 have sound /l/ in “almond”, 2/3 of Canadians say to bath a baby /ba:T/ (BrE), than /beiD/ (AmE). British English spelling is strongly favoured in Ontario and American English in Alberta. Thus differences between Canadian English and American English are largely in the area of pronunciation and vocabulary. Grammar differences don't exist on the level of Standard English.

Vocabulary provides a considerable number of Canadianisms. Designators for topography, flora and fauna make up many of these items: buffalo grass (бізонова трава), fambeau /fxm'bO/ (факел з березової кори), cutthroat (робітник, що розрізає рибу біля її голови), West-India fish (другий сорт тріски), Canada goose (канадська казарка), Canada jay (сіра сойка).

The pronunciation of Canadian English sometimes called General Canadian applies to Canada from Ottawa Valley to British Columbia and it is similar to General American English. It shares the same consonant system including the unstable contrast between /hw/ - /w/ which -wich. General Canadian vowel system is similar to that of the Northern variety of General American, i.e. opposition /O:/ - /O/ has been lost. The distinctions between /J/ - /i/, /eq/ - /e/ - /x/ are rapidly dying out. The most typical Canadian feature of pronunciation is Canadian raising. This refers to realization of diphthongs /au/, /ai/ with the higher and non-fronted first element /Au/, /Ai/ when followed by voiceless consonant, e.g. bout /bAut/.