A Study Of Canadian English As An English Variety

With the spread of English around the world, it has derived various varietiesamong which Canadian English is the most controversial issue in linguistic field.“Canadian English” was firstly proposed in1857ten years before the independence ofCanadian federation. For Canada’s geopolitical relation with America as well as thesimilarities in pronunciation, many scholars define it belonging to American English.However, many properties on phonetics, morphology and syntax appear in Englishusing in Canada, a country featured by its colonial history, immigrant history,multi-culture, and bilingual policy. As Avis and Dean believed, Canadian English is avariety of English with its distinctive features, independent of British and AmericanEnglish.Tracing the historical forces that gave rise to the English-speaking population aswell as its expansion in Canada is an indispensable part of understanding the presentform of Canadian English, for these external, non-linguistic forces, as important asinternal and linguistic factors, have also determined the modern characteristics ofpresent Canadian English apart from being responsible for very exsistence ofCanadian English. In view of Canada’s relative youth, the current form of CanadianEnglish could be closely tied up with its immigration history: who first broughtEnglish to Canada and where they came from; with which people in whichproportions, how this initial settlement was built upon; and finally, how today’sspeakers of Canadian English communicate.Although many controversies exist, this paper tends to present that CanadianEnglish has been developed into an independent variety of English. As we all know,Canada has a vast territory, extending from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to thePacific Ocean in the west and northward into the Arctic Ocean. Therefore this paperwill not comprise a detailed survey of every regional, social or ethnic variety ofEnglish spoken in Canada, rather it will principally examine the main features of whatmight be called Standard Canadian English, the variety spoken with subtle regionalvariations by most middle-class and indeed by many working-class people across thecountry. This uniform type of Canadian English is spoken over most of the country bythe majority of Anglophone Canadians, setting aside the less representative minority varieties.What are the features of Canadian English that can distinguish it from BritishEnglish and American English? What changes are in process of Canadian English atpresent? How does Canadian English change across the nation? What could accountfor this variation? How is Canadian English influenced through contact with otherlanguages including Aboriginal languages, French, and immigrant languages? In whataspects does American English influence the Canadian English? This paper wouldstart with tracing the origin, rise and development of Canadian English while a seriesof dictionaries for Canadians are researched. Through consulting dictionaries as wellas researches by other linguists, related language features of Canadian English as anEnglish variety will be presented systematically and scientifically. Most importantly,this paper will focus on analyzing causing factors of Canadian English, mainlythrough analyzing external or cultural factors, such as aboriginal culture, Europeanimmigration, bilingualism, American infiltration, and present multi-culturalism inCanada.Perhaps the acceptance of Canadian English as an English variety independent ofAmerican English has to go through hard efforts of several hundred years and severalgenerations of residents, however, language is not static but changing always, andhumans should respect the language diversity, and maintain culture identity, especiallyunder the background of globalization.