Over the past 50 years, Canadian English has become more uniform across regions and has adopted many American terms and pronunciations, while the use of Canadian spellings has gained in popularity.
These are the key results of a large-scale study by McGill researchers to update the Survey of Canadian English, initially done in 1972.
The goal was to observe and measure the influence of American English on how Canadians speak, explained Claire Henderson, who was a McGill MA student at the time the new data was collected and served as a co-investigator for the New Survey of Canadian English. The project was directed by McGill Linguistics Professor Charles Boberg.
A mixed result
The results revealed that in some ways Canadian English has become closer to the American version, but in other ways, differences have widened.
"Some American forms have become much more popular than British/Canadian ones, such as napkin instead of serviette, or rhyming lever with never instead of beaver," said Henderson. "On the other hand, spelling has actually become even more British/Canadian, especially for words like colour and centre."
The study also indicates that regional variations are declining.
The survey was distributed widely across Canada in 2023-2024 through a variety of channels: local community and heritage groups, libraries, museums, retirement homes, Linguistics and English departments at other universities, social media, as well as traditional media such as CBC and local news outlets.
The researchers received about 14,000 responses, a very large sample size that allowed them to make comparisons between different regions and age groups, in addition to direct comparisons with the original 1972 survey, which had a similar sample size.
The survey consisted of 85 questions, covering vocabulary, spelling, pronunciation and grammar. It was mostly based on the original survey, but included many modern questions. For example, it included questions about words that are known to vary across Canada, like cottage vs. cabin vs. camp.
"Canadians have the general sense that we speak differently from both the U.S. and the U.K. and that there are even differences in specific parts of Canada. We can often identify each other from our words and pronunciations and spellings. The survey results allow everyone to see the different American, British and uniquely Canadian aspects of our language and think about the changes happening around us," said Henderson.
Though the current study focused on comparisons with the 1972 survey, future publications will be centred around differences between regions and age groups, and how Canadians' ways of speaking might change after moving from one region of the country to another.
The survey is still open for anyone who would still like to participate.
About the study
"A New Survey of Canadian English: Fifty Years of Language Change," by Charles Boberg, Claire Henderson and Jackson Mundie, was published in the Canadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique.
This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC).
