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.[2] In particular, Standard Canadian English is defined by the cot–caught merger to [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):[3] the production of /oʊ/[a] and /aʊ/ with back starting points in the mouth and the production of /eɪ/ with a front starting point and very little glide[4] that is almost [e] in the Canadian Prairies.[5]
- ^ Dollinger, Stefan (2012). "Varieties of English: Canadian English in real-time perspective." In English Historical Linguistics: An International Handbook (HSK 34.2), Alexander Bergs and Laurel J. Brinton (ed.), 1858-1880. Berlin: De Gruyter. pp. 1859-1860.
- ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 222.
- ^ Boberg (2008).
- ^ Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), pp. 223–224.
- ^ Boberg (2008), p. 150.
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