pronounced as /notice/Standard Canadian English is the largely homogeneous variety of Canadian English that is spoken particularly across Ontario and Western Canada, as well as throughout Canada among urban middle-class speakers from English-speaking families,[1] excluding the regional dialects of Atlantic Canadian English. Canadian English has a mostly uniform phonology and much less dialectal diversity than neighbouring American English. In particular, Standard Canadian English is defined by the cot–caught merger to pronounced as /ɒ/ and an accompanying chain shift of vowel sounds, which is called the Canadian Shift. A subset of the dialect geographically at its central core, excluding British Columbia to the west and everything east of Montreal, has been called Inland Canadian English. It is further defined by both of the phenomena that are known as Canadian raising (which is found also in British Columbia and Ontario): the production of pronounced as //oʊ// and pronounced as //aʊ// with back starting points in the mouth and the production of pronounced as //eɪ// with a front starting point and very little glide that is almost pronounced as /[e]/ in the Canadian Prairies.
| Front | Central | Back | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Close | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||
| Mid | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | (pronounced as /link/) | pronounced as /link/ | ||
| Open | pronounced as /link/ | pronounced as /link/ | |||||
| Diphthongs | pronounced as /aɪ/ pronounced as /ɔɪ/ pronounced as /aʊ/ pronounced as /(ʌɪ)/ pronounced as /(ʌʊ)/ | ||||||
The onset of unraised pronounced as //aʊ// is usually low central pronounced as /[äʊ]/,[2] though it may be fronted before nasals. pronounced as //oʊ// usually remains backed pronounced as /[oʊ~o]/, unlike the fronted values found in the South, the Midland or California. That said, fronted pronunciations of pronounced as //oʊ// may exist for some younger speakers. In addition, some younger speakers front and lower pronounced as //ʊ//.[3]
Unlike most Northern American English, /u/ is generally fronted in Canadian English. In Victoria, where the historical distinction between post-coronal pronounced as //ju// and pronounced as //u// is often maintained, the latter may be so front as to gain a pronounced as /[j]/-like onglide.[4]
See main article: articles and Cot-caught merger. Almost all Canadians have the cot–caught merger, which also occurs primarily in the Western United States but also often elsewhere in the country, especially recently. Few Canadians distinguish the vowels in cot and caught, which merge as pronounced as /link/ (more common in Western and central Canada) or pronounced as /link/ (more common in the Maritimes and eastern mainland Canada in which it can even be fronted). Speakers with the merger often fail to hear the difference when speakers without the merger, such as General American (GenAm) and Inland Northern American English, pronounce the vowels. The merger has existed in Canada for several generations.
Some speakers may not exhibit the merger, especially older speakers and those living in rural areas or in the Prairies.
The standard pronunciation of pronounced as //ɑr// (as in start) is pronounced as /[ɑɹ]/, as in GenAm, or perhaps somewhat fronted as pronounced as /[ɑ̈ɹ]/. As with Canadian raising, the advancement of the raised nucleus can be a regional indicator. A striking feature of Atlantic Canadian speech (in the Maritime Provinces and Newfoundland) is a nucleus that approaches the front region of the vowel space; it is accompanied by a strong rhoticity ranging from pronounced as /[ɜɹ]/ to pronounced as /[ɐɹ]/.
Words such as origin, Florida, horrible, quarrel, warren, as well as tomorrow, sorry, sorrow, generally use the sound sequence of, rather than . The latter set of words often distinguishes Canadian from American pronunciation. In Standard Canadian English, there is no distinction between horse and hoarse.
Loanwords that have a low central vowel in their language of origin, such as llama, pasta, and pyjamas, as well as place names like Gaza and Vietnam, tend to have pronounced as //æ//, rather than pronounced as //ɒ// (which includes the historical pronounced as //ɑ//, pronounced as //ɒ// and pronounced as //ɔ// because of the father–bother and cot–caught mergers). That also applies to older loans like drama or Apache. The word khaki is sometimes pronounced pronounced as //ˈkɒki// (or even pronounced as //ˈkɒrki//). The pronunciation of drama with pronounced as //æ// is in decline, and studies found that 83% of Canadians used pronounced as //æ// in 1956, 47% in 1999, and 10% in 2012. More generally, younger speakers tend to use pronounced as //ɒ// more than they did before, though there's still quite a bit of variation.Some words, including plaza, façade, and lava will take a low central phone pronounced as /[ä]/, possibly distinct from both pronounced as //æ// and pronounced as //ɒ//.[5]
See main article: articles and Canadian Shift. The cot-caught merger creates a gap in the short vowel subsystem[6] and triggers a sound change known as the Canadian Shift, which involves the front lax vowels pronounced as //æ, ɛ, ɪ//. The pronounced as //æ// of bat is lowered and retracted in the direction of pronounced as /[a]/ except in some environments, as is noted below. Indeed, pronounced as //æ// is farther back than in almost all other North American dialects, and the retraction of pronounced as //æ// was independently observed in Vancouver[7] and is more advanced for Ontarians and for women than for people from the Prairies and Atlantic Canada and men.[8]
Then, pronounced as //ɛ// and pronounced as //ɪ// may be lowered (in the direction of pronounced as /[æ]/ and pronounced as /[ɛ]/) and/or retracted, but studies actually disagree on the trajectory of the shift.[9] [10] [11] For example, Labov and others (2006) noted a backward and downward movement of pronounced as //ɛ// in apparent time in all of Canada except the Atlantic Provinces, but no movement of pronounced as //ɪ// was detected.
Therefore, in Canadian English, the short a of trap or bath and the broad ah quality of spa or lot are shifted oppositely from those of the Northern Cities shift, which is found across the border in Inland Northern American English, and is causing both dialects to diverge. In fact, the Canadian short-a is very similar in quality to Inland Northern spa or lot. For example, the production pronounced as /[map]/ would be recognized as map in Canada but mop in Inland Northern United States.
See also: /æ/ raising. Unlike many American English dialects, pronounced as //æ// remains a low-front vowel in most environments in Canadian English. Raising along the front periphery of the vowel space is restricted to two environments, before nasal and voiced velar consonants, and even then varies regionally. Ontario and Maritime Canadian English often show some raising before nasals, but it is less extreme than in many American varieties. Much less raising is heard on the Prairies, and some ethnic groups in Montreal show no pre-nasal raising at all. On the other hand, some speakers in the Prairies and British Columbia have raising of pronounced as //æ// before voiced velars (pronounced as //ɡ// and pronounced as //ŋ//, with an up-glide rather than an in-glide, such that bag may almost rhyme with vague. For most Canadian speakers, pronounced as //ɛ// is also realized higher as pronounced as /[e]/ before pronounced as //ɡ//.
See main article: articles and Canadian raising. Perhaps the most recognizable feature of Canadian English is "Canadian raising," which is found most prominently throughout central and west-central Canada and in parts of the Atlantic Provinces. For the beginning points of the diphthongs (gliding vowels) pronounced as //aɪ// (as in the words height and mice) and pronounced as //aʊ// (as in shout and house), the tongue is often more "raised" than in other varieties of English in the mouth when the diphthongs are before voiceless consonants: pronounced as //p//, pronounced as //t//, pronounced as //k//, pronounced as //s//, pronounced as //ʃ//, and pronounced as //f//.
Before voiceless consonants, pronounced as //aɪ// becomes pronounced as /[ʌɪ~ɜɪ~ɐɪ]/. One of the few phonetic variables that divides Canadians regionally is the articulation of the raised allophone of that and pronounced as //aʊ//. In Ontario, it tends to have a mid-central or even mid-front articulation sometimes approaching pronounced as /[ɛʊ]/, but in the West and the Maritimes, a more retracted sound is heard, which is closer to pronounced as /[ʌʊ]/.[12] For some speakers in the Prairies and in Nova Scotia, the retraction is strong enough to cause some tokens of raised pronounced as //aʊ// to merge with pronounced as //oʊ//; couch then merges with coach, and both words sound the same (pronounced as //koʊtʃ//). Also, about then sounds like a boat, which is often inaccurately represented as sounding like "a boot" for comic effect in American popular culture.
In GenAm, out is typically pronounced as /äʊt/, but with slight Canadian raising, it may sound more like pronounced as /ɐʊt/, and with the strong Canadian raising of the Prairies and Nova Scotia, it may sound more like pronounced as /ʌʊt/. Canadian raising makes words like height and hide have two different vowel qualities. Also, for example, house as a noun (I saw a house) and house as a verb (Where will you house them tonight?) can then have two different vowel qualities: pronounced as /[hɐʊs]/ and pronounced as /[haʊz]/.
Especially in parts of the Atlantic Provinces, some Canadians do not have Canadian raising. On the other hand, certain non-Canadian accents use Canadian raising. In the United States, it can be found in areas near the border in dialects in the Upper Midwest, Pacific Northwest, and Northeastern New England (like Boston) dialects, but Canadian raising is much less common than in Canada. The raising of pronounced as //aɪ// alone is actually increasing throughout the United States and, unlike the raising of pronounced as //aʊ//, is generally not perceived as unusual by people who do not exhibit the raising.
Because of Canadian raising, many speakers can distinguish between words such as writer and rider, which can otherwise be pronounced the same in North American dialects, which typically turn both intervocalic pronounced as //t// and pronounced as //d// into an alveolar flap. Thus, writer and rider are distinguished solely by their vowel characteristics as determined by Canadian raising, which causes a split between rider as pronounced as /[ˈɹäɪɾɚ]/ and writer as pronounced as /[ˈɹʌɪɾɚ]/ .
Although Canadian English phonology is part of the greater North American sound system and so is therefore similar to American English phonology, the pronunciation of particular words may have British influence, and other pronunciations are uniquely Canadian. The Cambridge History of the English Language states, "What perhaps most characterizes Canadian speakers, however, is their use of several possible variant pronunciations for the same word, sometimes even in the same sentence."[13]
Like most other North American English dialects, Canadian English is almost always spoken with a rhotic accent, meaning that the r sound is preserved in any environment and not "dropped" after vowels, as commonly done by, for example, speakers in central and southern England where it is only pronounced when preceding a vowel.
Like GenAm, Canadian English possesses a wide range of phonological mergers, many of which are not found in other major varieties of English:the Mary–marry–merry merger which makes word pairs like Barry/berry, Carrie/Kerry, hairy/Harry, perish/parish, etc. as well as trios like airable/errable/arable and Mary/merry/marry have identical pronunciations (however, a distinction between the marry and merry sets remains in Montreal); the father–bother merger that makes lager/logger, con/Kahn, etc. sound identical;the very common horse–hoarse merger making pairs like for/four, horse/hoarse, morning/mourning, war/wore etc. perfect homophones (as in California English, the vowel is phonemicized as pronounced as //oʊ// due to the cot–caught merger: pronounced as //foʊr// etc.);the hurry-furry merger;and the prevalent wine–whine merger which produces homophone pairs like Wales/whales, wear/where, wine/whine etc. by, in most cases, eliminating pronounced as //hw// (ʍ), except in some older speakers.
In addition to that, flapping of intervocalic pronounced as //t// and pronounced as //d// to alveolar tap pronounced as /[ɾ]/ before reduced vowels is ubiquitous, so the words ladder and latter, for example, are mostly or entirely pronounced the same. Therefore, the pronunciation of the word "British" pronounced as //ˈbrɪtəʃ// in Canada and the U.S. is most often pronounced as /ˈbɹɪɾɪʃ/, while in England it is commonly pronounced as /ˈbɹɪtɪʃ/ or pronounced as /[ˈbɹɪʔɪʃ]/. For some speakers, the merger is incomplete and 't' before a reduced vowel is sometimes not tapped following pronounced as //eɪ// or pronounced as //ɪ// when it represents underlying 't'; thus greater and grader, and unbitten and unbidden are distinguished.
Many Canadian speakers have the typical American dropping of pronounced as //j// after alveolar consonants, so that new, duke, Tuesday, suit, resume, lute, for instance, are pronounced pronounced as //nu// (rather than pronounced as //nju//), pronounced as //duk//, pronounced as //ˈtuzdeɪ//, pronounced as //sut//, pronounced as //rəˈzum//, pronounced as //lut//. Traditionally, glide retention in these contexts has occasionally been held to be a shibboleth distinguishing Canadians from Americans. However, in a survey conducted in the Golden Horseshoe area of Southern Ontario in 1994, over 80% of respondents under the age of 40 pronounced student and news, for instance, without pronounced as //j//.[19] This glide-deletion is less common in Victoria, though younger speakers front pronounced as //u// to such a degree after coronals that some words can take a pronounced as /[j]/-like onglide.Canadians do include pronounced as //j// in revenue and avenue.
Especially in Vancouver and Toronto, an increasing number of Canadians realize pronounced as //ɪŋ// as pronounced as /[in]/ when the raising of pronounced as //ɪ// to pronounced as /link/ before the underlying pronounced as //ŋ//[20] is applied even after the "g" is dropped, leading to a variant pronunciation of taking, pronounced as /[ˈteɪkin]/. Otherwise it primarily is found in speakers from not just California but also from other Western states and Midwestern areas including the Upper Midwest.[21] [22] Speakers who use the pronounced as /[in]/ variant use it only for the underlying pronounced as //ɪŋ//, which makes taking with a dropped "g" no longer homophonous with taken. This pronunciation is otherwise perceived as incorrect and has been described as a "corruption of the language" by some listeners.[23]