XIV Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2022

English is one of Canada’s two official languages. According to the 2016 Canadian census, English is the mother tongue of approximately 19.5 million people, or 57 per cent of the population, and the first official language of about 26 million people, or 75 per cent of the Canadian population.

Speaking about the origin, 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 province, such as Halifax, founded in 1749. After the expulsion of the French-speaking Acadian population in the 1750s, Nova Scotia's English population was expanded with pioneers from New England. Canadian English was partly shaped by early immigrants from the UK and Ireland, but it was affected much more by the arrival of about 45,000 loyalists to the British crown during the American Revolutionary War. By the outbreak of the War of 1812 a few decades later, a significant part of the population of Ontario - which had about 100,000 inhabitants - were of US extraction. The result, especially west of Quebec, was an accent lightly shaped by British English, but much more so by 18th Century colonial American English. Since Ontarians were largely responsible for settling Western Canada in the following decades, their Americanised accent spread across the country and eventually became the de facto accent for the majority of Canadians.

Speaking about the features, Canadian as well as General American English is rhotic, it means that the r sound is preserved in any environment and not "dropped" after vowels.

Distinctive accent traits of vowels. Firstly, it's a vowel movement. They displace the sound / ɒ / back to / ɔː / (pronunciation for “cot” how "caught"); We can also notice a sound reduction, / æ / to sound / ʌ / for example, "cat" as "cut".

They replace sound / e / sound / æ /. For example, pronunciation for "rate" as "bat"), as well as the transition of the sound / ɪ / to sound / e /, example: pronunciation of "bit" as "bet".

Sound ‘a’. In many words ‘a’ sounds like ‘e’ (long and loud, open mouth). Sound ‘o’. Short sound ‘o’ is often changed to sound more like a short ‘a’.

Distinctive accent traits of consonants. ‘T' changes to ‘ch’ (especially when it's followed by ‘r’) trip –> /chrip/, travel –> /chravel/. ‘T’ disappears. twenty –> /twenny/, center –> /cenner/. In addition to that, flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to alveolar tap [ɾ] before reduced vowels is ubiquitous, so the words ladder and latter, for example, are mostly or entirely pronounced the same. For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped following /eɪ/ or /ɪ/ when it represents underlying 't'; thus greater and grader, and unbitten and unbidden are distinguished.

Undoubtedly, Canadian raising is the most distinctive phonetic feature of Canadian English. In Canadian English the “price” and “mouth” vowel phonemes, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, have special allophones employed in the environment of a preceding voiceless (fortis) consonant namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /f/ and /s/. These allophones are diphthongs with a mid starting-point (half-open or somewhat closer): [әi] and [ʌʊ] respectively. As mentioned, Canadian raising occurs in these two cases:

a) the diphthong /aɪ/ before voiceless final consonants is typically realized in Canada as raised /әi/. Examples: kite, tonight, invite, write.

The allophone of /aɪ/ is a major pronunciation feature which differentiates Canadian English from General and Northern American counterpart. This diphthong is pronounced relatively close to /әi/ before voiceless final consonants and it, too, is a high and fast diphthong. Because of Canadian raising many speakers are able to distinguish between words such as writer and rider.

b) the diphthong /aʊ/ before voiceless final consonants is typically realized in Canada as a raised [ʌu]. Examples: house, mouth, without, about, trout, out. The /ʌʊ/ allophone is sometimes perceived by Americans as a variety of /u/, which leads to popular claims that Canadians say ‘oot and aboot’ for out and about”.

Many Americans regard 'eh' as characteristic of Canadian English. Like Canadian raising, eh is used by some citizens of southern Ontario. For instance, interrogative "You like it, eh?" Narrative: "We had pizza, eh, and beer." Traditional greeting: "How's it going, eh?"

What came through in the theoretical part was that Canadian English is a mixture of British English and General American English.

Bibliographic list

B.A. THESIS, Canadian English // Aneta Šubertová, 2010 URL:https://dspace.cuni.cz/bitstream/handle/20.500.11956/39668/BPTX_2009_2_11410_0_84784_0_70456.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/canadian-english