0
Zerox Posted 19 years ago
Linguistics Studies

Canadians and their English

0 Peter Trudgill states in his book 01i00an introduction to language and society02i00: "Language can be a very important factor in group identification, group solidarity and the signalling of difference, and when a group is under attack from outside, signals of difference may become more important and are therefore exaggerated".02br
02br
00The above statement sounds reasonable. For some odd reason I started to think of Canadians. I'm not familiar with the way they speak, but I have understood, erroneously or not, that they do not want to be mixed up too much with Americans. If so, are there any major differences in pronounciation of some words, or some other special features that might be exaggerated?02br
00Or is it true that Canadians have been too busy to explaing to the British that they are not Americans, and vice versa, that they haven't had time to become Canadians?0-
  

Top answer

0-

— Anonymous

  • 0-
Free · every Monday

Get the Weekly English Kit 📬

New words, one handy idiom, and a 2-minute quiz — delivered to your inbox to keep your streak alive.

12 Answers
0
0 There are differences in pronunciation, but I wouldn't say we exaggerate them, except on shows like SCTV.01blockquote
02br
10Or is it true that Canadians have been too busy to explaing to the British that they are not Americans, and vice versa, that they haven't had time to become Canadians?12br
12blockquote
10Definitely not true.0-
0
0
0 The Western and Central Canadian English dialect does have several differences from conservative General American, although many dialects in the US have some or all of the same features that are found in Western/Central Canadian English. Western/Central Canadian English is actually closer to General American than most dialects spoken in the US are, due to recent vowel shifts. General America
0
0
0 00General Canadian English is extremely similar to General American English. However, there are a number of differences between the two dialects. Firstly, GCE (General Canadian English) exhibits a linguistic phenomenon called Canadian Raising. Basically, the diphthong “ai01i00”02i00--as in "by" or "lie"--is raised before voiceless consonants (t, k, p, s, f); by contr
0
0
0 >> Many Canadians pronounce the word "marry" as "merry." In GAE, “marry” is pronounced with the vowel “ae.” 02<<
02br
00I disagree. General American English nowadays almost always refers to conservative varieties of the Northern (but not Northeastern) and Western dialects, which all have the same marry-marry-Mary merger.02br
02br
00>> The di
0
0
Dear friends Emotion: smile

I am a russian student of foreign languages department and this year is my final one , I have a dissertation
0
0
Well, you are supposed to write about the new trends in Canadian English. Not the history of CE. I think that the Canadian Shift would probably be your best bet-it is a very recent innovation, and thus is one of the few features of CE that could be considered new. It also has many interesting Sociolinguistic variables associated with it-for example, young women are leading the
0
0
Thank you so much , I appreciate you input that is very sweet of you thank you once again
0
0
"Many Canadians pronounce the word "marry" as "merry." In GAE, “marry” is pronounced with the vowel 'ae.' "

I've never encountered an American who said marry with /ae/ . Maybe you'd find that in the New England region, but pretty much anywhere else... We say it "mayrree". Long a.

Actually, I take it back. Steve Martin says it with /ae/. That might even have been the trend way ba
0
0
Thank you very much as well I found some very useful information and this forum helped me so much , am just working on this material and there are a lot of different theories and so many opinions on this subject.
0

Related Questions