English in North America

English is spoken as a native language in two major spheres in America. The larger one covers the United States and English speaking Canada; the other, lesser sphere is the Caribbean area. The largest single English speaking area in the world is that formed by the United States and Canada. Approximately 85 percent of the 275 million Americans and almost two thirds of the Canadian population of about 31 million had English as their native language in 2000. Many of the inhabitants of Canada and the United States who do not have English as their first language, nevertheless use it in a multitude of different situations.The inhabitants of Canada and the United States who do not have English as their first language, nevertheless use it in a multitude of different situations. The United States does not have an official language despite efforts by the English Only movement; however, some 23 states have passed laws making it their official language. In Canada, both English and French are official languages. The next most widely used languages are Spanish and French. Significant number of Spanish speaking residents live in Miami and New York, as well as in many large American cities. French is the majority language of Quebec. In the United States the only concentrations of French are in New England, close to French Canada, and in Louisiana. Despite the large number of non-English native speakers (over one half in New Mexico, over one third in Hawaii, California, Arizona and Texas, and over one quarter in New York), there are few places in the United States and Canada where it is not possible to communicate in English. Despite highly developed French-English bilingualism, there are some 4.25 million monolingual French speakers in Canada. In the United States several non-English groups are expanding noticeably, above all Spanish and Chinese.

Canadian EnglishHistoryCanadian English is the product of four waves of immigration and settlement over a period of almost two centuries. The first large wave of permanent English-speaking settlement in Canada, and linguistically the most important, was the influx of Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution, chiefly from the Mid-Atlantic States as such, Canadian English is believed by some scholars to have derived from northern American English. The second wave from Britain and Ireland was encouraged to settle in Canada after the War of 1812 by the governors of Canada, who were worried about anti-English sentiment among its citizens. Canadian English contains elements of British English and American English in its vocabulary, as well as many distinctive Canadianisms. In Ontario, Quebec, British Columbia and Alberta, speech is heavily influenced by French, with many English words being replaced by their French counterparts. Yet, there are important features of Canadian English which distinguish it as an independent sub-variety of American English. What is distinctively Canadian about Canadian English is its combination of tendencies that are uniquely distributed. According to a study, Canadians with relatively more positive views of the United States and of Americans are more likely to have syllable reduction in words such as:mirror merewarren- warnlion lineThey also have fewer high diphthongs in words such as about or like, which is known as Canadian raising, where the diphthongs /a/ and /a/ are "raised" before voiceless consonants, namely /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, // and /f/. They are also more likely to voice the /t/ in words like party or butter. Because of Canadian raising, many speakers are able to distinguish between words such as writer and rider.Pro-British attitudes correlate well with a preservation of vowel distinctions before an /r/, such as spear it vs spirit, furry vs hurry, and oral vs aural as well as distinct vowels in cot vs caught.Pro-Canadian attitudes mean relatively more leveling of the vowel distinctions just mentioned, more loss of /j/, in words like tune, dew and new (which is also true for speakers with positive attitudes towards the United States)A number of surveys have been conducted to register the preferences with regard to the pronunciation of various individual words, as well as spellings. Approximately 75 percent say zed (BrE) instead of zee (AmE) as the name of the letter, and just as many use chesterfield for sofa (AmE and BrE). Two thirds have an /l/ in almond, but two thirds also say bath (BrE) rather than bathe (AmE) .More examples:Dressing gown or Housecoat ,AmE- bathrobe.Bachelor: bachelor apartment, an apartment all in a single room, AmE studioWashroom public toilet in BrE, and restroom in AmEBritish English spellings are strongly favored in Ontario, while the American English ones are favored in Alberta. Spelling may call forth relatively emotional reactions, since it is a part of the language system which people are especially conscious of, in contrast to many points of pronunciation. This means that using British English spelling rather than an American English on can be something of a declaration of allegiance. 1. French-derived words that in American English end with -or and -er, such as color or center, retain British spellings (colour and centre).2. In other cases, Canadians and Americans differ from British spelling, such as in the case of nouns like curb and tire, which in British English are spelled kerb and tyre.Canadian spelling conventions can be partly explained by Canada's trade history. For instance, the British spelling of the word cheque probably relates to Canada's once-important ties to British financial institutionsCanada's automobile industry, on the other hand, has been dominated by American firms from its inception, explaining why Canadians use the American spelling of tire (hence, "Canadian Tire") and American terminology for the parts of automobiles (for example, truck instead of lorry, gasoline instead of petrol, trunk instead of boot).As the following examples show, differences between Canadian English and United States American English are largely in the area of pronunciation and vocabulary.Vocabulary provides for a considerable number of Canadianisms. Examples are: sault waterfall, muskeg a northern bog, canals-fjords, cat spruce a kind of tree, tamarack a kind of larch, kinnikinnick plants used in a mixture of dried leaves, bar and tobacco for smoking in earlier times, konanee a kind of salmon, siwash duck a kind of duck.The use of the discourse marker eh? is also considered to be especially Canadian.The pronunciation of Canadian English applies to Canada from the Ottawa Valley to British Columbia and is similar to General American. It shares the same consonant system, including the unstable contrast between the /hw/ of which and the /w/ of witch. Its vowel system is similar to that of the northern variety of General American, which means that the opposition between /a/ and /o/ as in cot and caught has been lost.What shows up as the most typical Canadian feature of pronunciation, is the already mentioned Canadian raising. This refers to the realization of /a/ and /ai/ with a higher and non-fronted first element [u] and [i] when followed by a voiceless consonant. Elsewhere the realization is /au/ and /ai/. Hence each of the pairs bout /but/- bowed /baud/ and bite /bit/ - bide /baid/ have noticeably different allophones. One of the most interesting aspects of Canadian raising is its increasing loss among young Canadians. This movement may be understood as a part of a standardization process in which the standard is General American and not General Canadian. This movement has been documented most strongly among young females in Vancouver and Toronto, and is indicative of a generally positive attitude towards things American, including vocabulary choice. However, an independent development among young Vancouver males, rounding of the first element of /a/ before voiceless consonants as /ou/, is working against this standardization and may be part of a process promoting a non-standard local norm.

American EnglishThe regional varieties of English in the United States consist of three general areas : Northern (of which Canadian English is a part), Midland and Southern. Each of them may be further differentiated into subregions. Grammar is of relatively little importance for these three areas. Most of the dividing is based on vocabulary and pronunciation. The lexical distinctions are most evident in the more old-fashioned, rural vocabulary. The Southern accents realize /ai/ as /a/, that is, with a weakened off-glide, or no off-glide at all, especially before a voiced consonant, and /u/ and / / are being increasingly fronted. Some of the characteristics :1. the classic Southern drawl, caused when vowels become long:house = ha:wse, eggs = ai:gz; some words even contain triphthongs: flowers. fla:ierz]2. loss of final t, d after another consonant: an(d), tol(d)3. In many varieties of Southern States English, the vowel is often realized as or when followed by a velar nasal . Therefore, words like sing , thing and drink are pronounced as /s/, / (/, /drk/

Lack of rhoticity is typical of Eastern New England and New York City. It is also characteristic of Coastal Southern and Gulf Southern, even though younger white speakers are increasingly rhotic, while Mid Southern has always been rhotic.

Northern does not have /j/ in words like due, new, nor does North Midland, but /j/ may occur throughout the South. Characteristics:1. The merger of // and //, making father and bother rhyme. This change is in a transitional or completed stage nearly universally in North American English.2. The merger of // and // in many areas.[citation needed] This is the so-called cotcaught merger, where cot and caught are homophones. The opposition between these two sounds is maintained in the South.3. Canadian raising is a Northern form which, despite its name, is common in many American cities of the Inland NorthThe pronunciation of the Northern Midland area more or less from Ohio westwards, has often been referred to as General American. This label is a convenient fiction used to designate a huge area in which there are numerous local differences in pronunciation, but in which there are none of the more noticeable subregional divisions such as those along the eastern seabord. Furthermore, the differences between North Midland and Inland North are relatively insignificant. Both areas are rhotic, are not likely to vocalize /l/, have /ai/ as /i/ or /ai/, do not distinguish // and // and no longer maintain the /j/ on-glide in the due words. Most significant of all for the selection of North Midland for the label General American is the fact that it is this type of accent more than any other which is used on the national broadcasting networks.The most noticeable regional contrast is that between North and South. This division is, in addition to vocabulary and pronunciation differences, underscored to some extent at least by grammatical features. It seems that it is only in Southern varieties, including Black English Vernacular, that such admittedly non-standard features occur as perfective done (I done seen it), future gon (Im gon tell you something), and several more far reaching types of multiple negation, such as a carry-over of negation across clauses (Hes not coming, I dont believe I believe hes not coming).It is also in the South that an area is to be found with speech forms approaching the character of a traditional dialect (such as otherwise found only in Great Britain and Ireland, and possibly in Newfoundland). The dialect which is meant is Appalachian English and the related Ozark English, which are found in the Southern Highlands. The English of these regions is characterized by a relatively high incidence of older forms which have generally passed out of other forms of American English. Examples include syntactic phenomena such as a-prefixing on verbs (Im a-fixin to carry her to town), morphological-phonological ones such as initial /h/ in hit it and haint aint and lexical ones such as afore before or nary not any.