This is a final paper for "Language Variation in Canada," Fall 2003 at the University of New Hampshire.
Stephanie Pelhe
The “Corrupt Dialect”: Spelling and Pronunciation in Canadian English
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This is a final paper for "Language Variation in Canada," Fall 2003 at the University of New Hampshire. |
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Stephanie Pelhe The “Corrupt Dialect”: Spelling and Pronunciation in Canadian English |
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Spelling Variants in CE: Two Studies
British Pronunciation in CE: Two Studies
Both a British person and an American could be easily identified by either their spoken or their written English. There are many characteristics of their speech or spelling system that would give them away. The British speaker would say [ § « djul] for “schedule” and would use British spelling conventions such as “centre”, “colour”, and “anaesthesia”, while the American would say [skєd ½ u \ l] and write “center”, “color”, and “anesthesia”. The differences stem from centuries of being separate countries, and, of course, from the writing of Noah Webster's famous American dictionary.
However, these distinctions beg the question: what about Canadian English? Canada still calls Queen Elizabeth II its “sovereign” ( http://www.canada.gc.ca/ ), but it also shares a long border and a free trade agreement with the United States. This dichotomy can be seen as a symbol for Canada's language choices as well. Somewhat British and somewhat American, Canadian English mixes practicality, habit, and history to make a hybrid English that has existed since Canada's beginning as an English colony. The question that I wanted to explore in this paper is what factors influence Canadians' language choices. Do Canadians' feelings toward America or England or even Canada sway them to spell or pronounce their words differently? Do shifts in world politics affect how Canadians use language in their everyday life? What kinds of studies are being done on Canadians' language choices? This paper will begin by taking a quick look at the current condition of Canadian English and at the history of English in Canada. Then I will outline the studies that I found on spelling and pronunciation in CE and examine the findings and implications of this research.
In terms of Allard and Landry's (1988) concept of ethnolinguistic vitality, which rates a language's chance for future survival based on the three factors of institutional support, prestige, and demography, Canadian English would be ranked high. As one of Canada's two official languages, English receives plenty of institutional support. The majority of schools outside of the province of Quebec are English schools. According to the Canadian Newspaper Association's website, there are currently 92 English language newspapers published daily across Canada from the Maritimes to British Columbia ( http://www.cna-acj.ca/client/cna/ult.nsf/CnaSearch ). In an Internet search for “Canadian television”, all but one of the top ten results were websites written in English only. The wide variety of media available shows that English is well supported by the government and the people of Canada.
In terms of prestige, English is an official government language; therefore, all federal documents, laws, and proclamations must be written in English. In provinces other than Quebec, most of the industries and offices conduct business primarily in English, so it is an important language to learn in order to secure a well-paid job. Canadian English does not suffer from any lack of prestige, especially since over half of all Canadians claim it as their mother tongue.
Demographically, Canadian English is doing very well. According to 2002 Census data from Statistics Canada, of Canada's approximately 29,639,030 inhabitants, 17,352,315 claim English as their mother tongue. Another 342,520 Canadians claim English and at least one other language as their mother tongues. In addition, 21,863,015 Canadians claim English or English and at least one other language as the language spoken in their home. That number shows a 5.1% increase from the 1996 Census. For more Census data, visit www.statcan.ca .
From this information, one can see that Canadian English is in no danger of disappearing. It seems even to be gaining strength from one Census to the next. All of these factors suggest that it has high ethnolinguistic vitality, and Canadian English seems poised to stay that way.
The history of how Canadian English evolved is important to discuss in any paper about CE. Two waves of immigration to Canada influenced the development of the distinct variety known as Canadian English. The first wave took place mid to late 18 th century. British Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution took refuge in Canada, making up about 80% of the population of Upper Canada by 1813 (Brinton and Fee 2001). These settlers came from New York, Pennsylvania, and western New England, and they brought with them their own ways of speaking. They also brought with them American schoolteachers and schoolbooks. Noah Webster's spelling book was used in Upper Canada until the mid-1800s, and Canadian schoolchildren learned to end the alphabet with the letter “zee”.
These developments did not sit well with the British who were in charge of Canada. From 1812 until about 1857, 1.2 million British were encouraged to immigrate to Canada to counter the American influence there (Chambers 2003). The Victorian British who did come were shocked by the state of the English language in Canada, which “sounded unpleasantly Yankee” (Brinton and Fee 2001). Susanna Moodie's book Roughing it in the bush , in which she lampoons the manners and speech of the Canadians she encountered during her stay there in the 1830s, was a bestseller in England in 1852 (Chambers 2003). Also, in his article “Canadian Dainty,” Jack Chambers quotes Rev. A. Constable Geikie, the first person to use the term “Canadian English”, as having said that CE was “a corrupt dialect growing up amongst our population, and gradually finding access to our periodical literature” (2003, p.6).
After the British had had time to settle in Canada, they felt it their duty to take over the duty of educating the children in a manner acceptable to the British society of that time. No longer did they want “some anti-British adventurer instilling into the young and tender mind sentiments hostile to the parent state” (Rolph qtd. in Chambers 2003, p.8). In addition, they were frightened by the blending of the accents of their children, the “Yankee” children, and the children of immigrants from other European countries. The children in Canada should speak and write like the British citizens that they were. This educational movement toward the use of British English added into CE “variants of the words and pronunciations used by the indigenous Loyalists” (Chambers 2003, p.8). Thus there are multiple layers to CE: an American layer brought in by Loyalists and British layers brought in by the earliest English-speaking Canadian settlers and by Victorian-era British immigrants bent on education reform. This interaction produces the CE that we see today, a “combination of tendencies that are uniquely distributed” (Bailey qtd. in Brinton and Fee 2001).
As in American English, there are slight regional variations in CE. Unlike in American English, however, these variations are so slight in CE that the variety is virtually identical from Prince Edward Island to Calgary. However, as Chambers (1998) notes in the chapter on Canadian English from Edwards (1998), there might be differences depending on the speaker's social class, area (urban or rural), and length of time in Canada. For this reason, Chambers speaks only of “urban, middle-class English as spoken by people who have been urban, middle-class, anglophone Canadians for two generations or more” as the standard accent of CE (1998, p.252). He also sets up the English of St John's, Newfoundland as an exception not to be included in this accent. In my discussion of Canadian English, I will mostly be discussing this standard that Chambers defines. The studies we will look at were conducted in urban areas in Ontario and Saskatchewan. For a good discussion of Newfoundland English, one of the idiosyncratic accents of English not covered here, see Heron's paper.
Now that the historical facts and definitions about CE have been laid out, we can start to look at the factors that influence which “tendencies” are used in everyday speech and writing. The first set of articles that I looked at dealt with the effect of anti-Americanism and Canadian nationalism on spelling choices in CE. In the article “Canada's bi-modal spelling tradition: Choosing between American and British spelling variants”, Diala Homaidan hypothesizes that if one has strong nationalistic feelings toward Canada, then his/her spelling choices will usually lean more toward the British variant (2000). She cites Gibbins (1995) in saying that “the traditional spine of Canadian nationalism has been anti-Americanism”, so, in her study, pro-Canadian feelings are equal to anti-American ones (2000).
In the study, 100 Queen's University students between the ages of 18 and 25 were given a questionnaire in which they were to choose the spellings of randomly placed words on the page. In effect then, they were not choosing between the British and American variant but were indicating their choice for how to spell a certain word. The 44 males and 56 females who completed the questionnaire were then asked to give a measure of their own Canadian nationalism on a scale of 1 to 5. All of the participants had been educated in Canada. Much to Homaidan's surprise, the hypothesis was not supported by the findings. For both males and females, the British variant was chosen 63.5% of the time on average. No matter how they had ranked themselves in terms of Canadian nationalism, each group chose the British variant 60% to 70% of the time.
These findings suggest that neither gender nor, when measured this way, nationalism have any effect on the choice of spelling variant. Another factor to be considered though is the students' knowledge of which spelling is British and which is American. When the researcher surveyed the students after the fact about their choices, more than half the time that they had chosen an American spelling, they claimed they had selected it because it was the “Canadian spelling” (2000).
Similar results were found by Sandeep Prasad in “Canadian nationalism, anti-American sentiment and use of Canadian spelling and pronunciation variants”. Prasad actually based this research on studies by Chambers (1995,1998) and Nylvek (1992) that will be discussed later in this paper. Prasad wanted to answer three research questions: 1.) Is there a relationship between Canadian nationalism and anti-Americanism?; 2.) Is nationalism related to one's choice of spelling and pronunciation variants?; 3.) Are sex and age factors that influence the choice of variants? (Prasad, 2000, p.48).
Questionnaires were handed out to patients waiting in a doctor's office in Trenton, Ontario. There were 80 respondents: 13 between the ages of 14 and 29; 46 between 30 and 49; and 21 between 50 and 69 (2000). As only 15 participants were male, the role that gender might play in such choices could not be analyzed. In Prasad's analysis of the data collected on participants' choices of spelling variants, pronunciation variants, vocabulary words, and feelings of either Canadian nationalism or anti-American sentiment, the researcher discovered a positive correlation between Canadian nationalism and anti-American feelings. That seems to suggest that the two feelings could be related, but there is still a chance that someone might be strongly anti-American but not particularly enthusiastic about being Canadian. From this information, I would say that the correlation between being pro-Canada and being anti-America is not really strong enough for either researcher to claim that the two feelings are the same. Prasad's findings also confirm Homaidan's research by stating that there seems to be no correlation between nationalistic ideas and choices of British or American variants.
Prasad proposes three reasons for this lack of relatedness. Perhaps Canadians do not know which variant is which (as Homaidan discovered as well). Maybe they feel that retaining differences between Canadian and American English is not important to preserving Canada's identity. Finally, it is possible that people do not see choices of spelling or pronunciation variants to be related to their attitudes toward Canada (2000).
Whatever the reason, neither study found a link between nationalism and language choices in Canadian English. However, I think that more studies need to be done to determine what does influence Canadian English speakers' choice of variants. Research testing whether Canadians can correctly identify British and American variants would greatly help this field. In addition, I agree with Homaidan's proposal that dictation be used to study spelling variants as it would generate a “more ‘immediate ‘ spelling of the words” (2000, p.45). The participants would not be swayed by seeing the two familiar variants on the same page.
These two articles did help me to find out what sort of influences are affecting Canadians' use of both British and American variants in spelling. The most influential factor seems to be the use of word processing software. Microsoft Word and Corel WordPerfect both have a CE database for their spell checking systems. In fact, the version of MSWord that I am using to write this paper has databases for the English of many places, including Australia, the Caribbean, Ireland, the Philippines, South Africa, and Canada. I had no idea that they were even an option until I researched this paper. Prasad believes that many Canadians are also unaware of these options, as I was, and they continue to use the American English database when checking documents (Prasad 2000, p.50). Thus the American variants are becoming more prevalent among young people as the “correct” spelling, or so their computers are telling them. Prasad cites the lack of use of the British variants focussed and focussing among the youngest group in his survey as an example of how American word processing programs, which would mark focussing as incorrect, are influencing the variants that young people choose.
Homaidan also cites the prevalence of American mass media and American textbooks in Canadian schools as factors that are bringing American variants more to the forefront of CE usage, whereas the British spelling was considered the norm in previous generations (2000).
As there are British and American spellings in CE, there are also British and American pronunciations that co-exist. I would like briefly to discuss two articles about the decline of the British pronunciation that was the norm in Canada until about the 1950s. Chambers (2002) quotes dialectologist Rex Wilson's classification of this accent as “Canadian Dainty.” Some of the features of this accent include the pronunciation of “schedule” as [ § « djul] and “whale” as [hwel]. The clear enunciation so prized by Victorian era educators comprises the root of this accent in CE. From Victorian times until about the middle of the 20 th century, this pronunciation was the mark of white-collar workers and it was considered the correct way to speak, as it was chosen as the accent of the Canadian Broadcasting Corp. in 1936 (Chambers 2002). Studies have been conducted in the past 40 years or so to measure how many people were still using this “Canadian Dainty” and in what age groups was it most prevalent. Chambers (2002) and Nylvek (1992) published articles regarding their study of this accent in Ontario and Saskatchewan respectively, and those articles give us a good idea of the future of this British pronunciation.
Chambers (2002) used his findings from his Dialect Topography of the Golden Horseshoe (1994) to examine two features of this “Canadian Dainty.” He focused on the variant pronunciations of “leisure” and the retention of the yod in words such as “student” and “news”. He then compared his findings to the findings of Scargill and Warkentyne's (1972) research of language use among parents and their high school age children for an apparent time study. In Chamber's (2002) analysis, only in people over the age of 70 does the use of the British pronunciation of [lε ½ \ ] near the 50% mark at 41% to 42%. Of people surveyed under the age of 40, less than 15% report using the British pronunciation. It hovers around 20% to 25% for people aged 40-69. Averaging out these figures shows us that only 16% use the British variant.
These findings also reflect the findings of Scargill and Warkentyne (1972). The high school parents (around 40 in 1972), who would fall into the 60-69 age group 22 years later, show a 76% use of the American variant [li ½ | ] as compared to their 70% usage of it alone and 7% usage of both variants in 1972. The high school students numbers are also comparable, with 66% saying they used only the American variant and 12% saying they used both variants in 1972 and 79% of the age group into which they now fall (around 40 years old) using the American variant all the time. From this data, we can see that the use of the British pronunciation, once a marker of social class and educational level, is not dropping within each age group, but it slowly declining from generation to generation.
These findings are corroborated by the findings of Nylvek (1992) in her study of Saskatchewan English. Nylvek collected her data through a postal questionnaire. She received 662 responses from various areas in Saskatchewan both urban and rural; she divided the results along gender lines and along urban/rural lines (2002). She also looked at the pronunciation of “new” and “student”, and she found that teenagers used the American variants [nu] and [stud \ nt] “significantly more often” than the adults surveyed (2002, p. 273). The highest frequency of use of the American variants was found among urban and rural teenage females, who, as researchers have discovered, are the best predictors of in what direction language will go in the future. This data from Nylvek matches nicely with Chambers' (2002) prediction that the jod after coronal consonants is being lost in the speech of the younger generation and will disappear in the future. Nylvek's research in Saskatchewan and Chamber's study in Ontario show that the same pattern is being followed across Canada.
Why is “Canadian Dainty” dying out? As it was with the spelling variants, America's heavy presence in the media, including television, movies, and music, influences the pronunciation that is heard on a daily basis. In addition, Britain's influence in the world diminished greatly in the last part of the 20 th century. Britain is not the world power that it once was, and its former colonies have begun to embrace their own mixed heritage and create new hybrid cultures. Chambers (2002) also cites the more recent immigrations from non-English speaking countries as a factor that had diluted the once strong British influence in Canada. There is no longer prestige in having a British-Canadian accent; the emphasis now is on speaking Canada's own variety of English, created out of language of the British, American, European, Asian, and Middle Eastern settlers who have come to Canada since the 1700s.
The existence of these spelling and pronunciation variants in Canadian English mirrors very well the Canadian ideal for multiculturalism: the mosaic. Instead of the “melting pot” of the US, in Canadian society the cultures all retain their own “shape” and “texture” but they come together, as tiles in a mosaic blend into a beautiful picture. Canadian English speakers have adopted all of the words, spellings, and pronunciations of the British and American immigrants and incorporated them into the vernacular.
And, just as Canada saw more than just those two original waves of immigration, so CE was influenced by the arrival of the more recent immigrants from Europe and Asia. These immigrants have not added too much in the way of new pronunciations or spellings, but they have brought with them new vocabulary words or new words for old concepts. In his chapter on Canadian English for Edwards (1998), Chambers cites the example of the three separate words that exist for grilled skewers of meat in CE: “ brochette from French, souvlaki from Greek, and shishkebab from Turkish” (1998, p. 271). The blending of the layers of the Loyalist and British settlers created this new variety of English in Canada in the 1800s, but the new layers being added by immigrants from non-English speaking countries are constantly influencing and changing the variety we call CE.
The model of the “cultural mosaic” involves cultures resisting assimilation, encouraging intergroup harmony, and, paradoxically, learning at least one of Canada's official languages. We see all of these ideals in the development of Canada's unique variety of English. In language matters, English-speaking Canadians of all backgrounds are constantly resisting linguistic assimilation by simply including new foreign words into their everyday speech; all words are accepted as being of equal value. This attitude of welcoming new words into CE in turn encourages intergroup harmony. Canadians are so obliging that they will allow in useful new words rather than try to keep their language (what some might see as) “pure”. Although the notion that one must learn English or French to work or go to school in Canada may seem to be at odds with the idea of this cultural mosaic, it is actually a very integral part of it. The country is joined by these official languages just as a mosaic is joined by glue or some other agent. What keeps the picture a mosaic is the idea that Canadian English is a hybrid language made interesting and different by the cultures that have added words and phrases to it in the past and the present. The layering and blending of languages is not a process that ended 100 years ago with the Loyalists and the British Victorians; it is a process that continues to this day in Canada and will continue as long as there are new cultures being added to the mosaic.
Brinton, L. & M. Fee (2001). Canadian English. In John Algeo, ed. The Cambridge History of the English Language, Vol. 6.
Keywords : /CA, /LE, /$MOR, /$PHY, /$SP
Summary : This article examines the distinctive features of Canadian English. Brinton and Fee cover morphology, phonology, spelling, and lexical items. It is a descriptive article that tries to explain the features but does not delve too deeply into how or why these features appear. There is a bit of settlement history at the start in order that readers might get a little background on the beginnings of CE. From there the article is divided into sections about the different linguistic features. A comprehensive list of words and phrases unique to CE is a great end to the article. They include not only Canadian variants for common concepts but also words and phrases that are related to Canadian culture and history, like “Bill 101”, “Metis”, and “anglophone”.
Commentary: Brinton and Fee have provided a great resource for seeing what is distinctive about CE. The article explains concepts very well, and, because it is short, keeps its descriptions concise and manageable. This article is a good starting point for a research project on CE, because it lists the most widely seen features. From this article, a person could get a good idea of what sorts of areas there are to research, especially in regards to phonology.
Chambers, J. (2002). 'Canadian Dainty': The rise & decline of Briticisms. In Raymond Hickey (ed.). The legacy of colonial English: Studies in transported dialects . Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Keywords: /CA, /ON, /LE, /$CH, /$PHY, /$A
Summary : In this article, Chambers takes on two related tasks. First, he gives a detailed history of how Canadian English was shaped by Canada's settlement history. He talks about early attitudes toward CE, and how those attitudes formed the accent that is referred to as “Canadian Dainty”.
The second part of the article uses data from his Dialect Topography of the Golden Horseshoe to see if this “Canadian Dainty” still exists in the speech of English speaking Ontarians. He looks at the pronunciation of the word “leisure” and the retention/deletion of the yod after coronal consonants to see how many of those surveyed still keep the British pronunciations of [lε ½ \ ] and [njuz].
At the end, Chambers also lists some reasons why he thinks that British pronunciations of words are becoming less prevalent in CE. He believes that Britain's declining power in the world and the influx of new, non-English speaking immigrants has influenced how people in Canada speak.
Commentary : Chambers' writing is so clear, and his explanations are thorough without being boring. He also uses an apparent time study to see how variants are used by certain age groups over time. Anyone researching the history of CE and how it is/was perceived would really benefit from this article; in addition, this article would be very helpful for anyone researching how phonological features of CE are distributed among the population by age.
Clarke, S. (1993). The Americanization of Canadian Pronunciation: A survey of palatal glide usage. In S. Clarke, ed. Focus on Canada . Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Keywords: /CA, /NF, /PHY
Summary/Commentary: This article is a good resource for anyone researching the use of the yod with coronal consonants in words like “tune” and “news”. However, as Clarke focuses on the use of the yod in St. John's English, I was not able to use it for this project about general Canadian English. Clarke's findings would be important for anyone researching Newfoundland or St. John's English or palatal glide usage in all of Canada.
DeWolf, G. (1995). The accent of teachers in Vancouver English. American Speech, 70 , 329-36.
Keywords: /BC, /PHY
Summary/Commentary : This article is actually based on Gregg (1992) and the results of the Survey of Vancouver English. DeWolf uses the findings of the SVEN to focus specifically on teachers' choices on that survey. The eleven variables selected were then used to judge whether teachers tend toward a specific “accent” of CE.
The article is fairly short; it is also very specific in the type of speakers at which it looks. If one desired to do research about teachers in Canada, this article would be very helpful. However, most likely, one could find a more thorough discussion of CE in Vancouver in Gregg (1992).
Gregg, R.J. (1992). The survey of Vancouver English. American Speech, 67 , 250-67.
Keywords: /BC, /$PHY
Summary/Commentary : This article is a summary of the findings of the Survey of Vancouver English (SVEN). The researchers were looking to record people's use of 39 rule-oriented phonological variables and 80 words with free variation. In addition, they wanted to measure the use of vocabulary words taken from Chinook Jargon and the use of variants such as “chesterfield” and “curtains/drapes”.
Although this article was not really helpful for my purposes, it does highlight a lot of the features of CE that people tend to study. This would be a good article to consult about vocabulary variants and the use of “chesterfield” in the western part of Canada. I did not find too many studies based this far west, so it is fairly unique in that respect.
Homaidan, D. (2000). Canada's bi-modal spelling tradition: Choosing between American and British spelling variants. Strathy Undergraduate Working Papers on Canadian English, 1 , 36-46.
Nylvek, J. (1992). Is Canadian English in Saskatchewan becoming more American?. American Speech, 67 , 268-77.
Prasad, S. (2000). Canadian nationalism, anti-American sentiment, and use of Canadian spelling and pronunciation variants.
Strathy Undergraduate Working Papers on Canadian English, 1 , 47-60.
Pratt, T.K. (1993). The hobgoblin of Canadian English spelling. In Sandra Clarke, ed. Focus on Canada . John Benjamins, Amsterdam. 45-64.
Keywords: /CA, /LE, /$SP
Summary/Commentary: This article has a lot of references to other articles. It also has some great information about the Freelance Editors' Association of Canada's search for the “correct' answers for how to edit CE. Their survey basically produced no answers that they did not already have: people choose their own spelling variants with really no consistent pattern.
The problem that I found with this article is that most of its statistics are old and perhaps slightly outdated. I was looking for more recent information, but Pratt has set out a lot of good previous studies on the subject. There are great charts and graphs as well.
Scargill, M.H. & H. Warkentyne (1972). The survey of Canadian English: A report. In The English Quarterly, 5 , 47-104.
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