Billions of people around the world speak English. This language found at large over all the American continent is now spoken across our planet. Non-native speakers have adopted English as the lingua franca to be able to communicate better with each other to facilitate commercial, cultural, or administrative exchanges just to name a few. Many of the countries today that speak the English language are former British colonies, Canada not being an exception to this. Even though it has two official languages, one being French, the English language is widely spoken across its vast territory. Someone could believe that the result of the Canadian Confederation, which led to the unity of the British colonies, would have highly impacted the English
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As mentioned by Bloomfield (1948), the American settlers brought with them the language that was spoken at that time in the Thirteen Colonies and they were paramount to Canada’s original English speaking people. The Loyalists, the post-Loyalists, and their offspring contributed widely to the English-speaking population of Canada. In addition, Bloomfield stated that the military was another salient group which should be recognized, even though their presence was only for a brief or a temporary period. He added that it is probable that under close examination their presence would reveal lexical and phonological traits on present-day Canadian English. However, the remaining soldiers blended in as well as other emigrants. The varieties of English spoken by the military and the emigrants were gradually assimilated into the Canadian English which had been provided to this country by the Loyalists. Those American settlers had set the tone and strongly established the attributes of the English language in Canada (Bloomfield, 1948). The following paragraphs will provide examples of language features that are clearly visible to explain this point of …show more content…
According to Woods as stated in Clarke’s book Varieties of English around the World (1993), Upper Canada constituted of people called Loyalists and Late Loyalists which arrived from Pennsylvania and the western part of New England. The authors Graddol, Leith, and Swann (1996) mentioned that the English established on the American continent originated from the early modern era. Those settlers were part of the Old World and originally emigrated from Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland. The speech mixture of the various English dialects that came from the emigrants assimilated to form the Canadian English of the first Loyalists (Bloomfield, 1948). The authors added that many claim the numerous differences between the English of America and British English could be attributed to the settlers being more conservative about their language. For example, one characteristic is that in the Elizabethan English time, there was a widespread pronunciation of the letter /r/ in words such as cart and far which was later abandoned by Londoners, but the settlers had already left the country and kept this feature (Graddol, Leith, & Swann,
As mentioned by Bloomfield (1948), the American settlers brought with them the language that was spoken at that time in the Thirteen Colonies and they were paramount to Canada’s original English speaking people. The Loyalists, the post-Loyalists, and their offspring contributed widely to the English-speaking population of Canada. In addition, Bloomfield stated that the military was another salient group which should be recognized, even though their presence was only for a brief or a temporary period. He added that it is probable that under close examination their presence would reveal lexical and phonological traits on present-day Canadian English. However, the remaining soldiers blended in as well as other emigrants. The varieties of English spoken by the military and the emigrants were gradually assimilated into the Canadian English which had been provided to this country by the Loyalists. Those American settlers had set the tone and strongly established the attributes of the English language in Canada (Bloomfield, 1948). The following paragraphs will provide examples of language features that are clearly visible to explain this point of …show more content…
According to Woods as stated in Clarke’s book Varieties of English around the World (1993), Upper Canada constituted of people called Loyalists and Late Loyalists which arrived from Pennsylvania and the western part of New England. The authors Graddol, Leith, and Swann (1996) mentioned that the English established on the American continent originated from the early modern era. Those settlers were part of the Old World and originally emigrated from Northern England, Scotland, and Ireland. The speech mixture of the various English dialects that came from the emigrants assimilated to form the Canadian English of the first Loyalists (Bloomfield, 1948). The authors added that many claim the numerous differences between the English of America and British English could be attributed to the settlers being more conservative about their language. For example, one characteristic is that in the Elizabethan English time, there was a widespread pronunciation of the letter /r/ in words such as cart and far which was later abandoned by Londoners, but the settlers had already left the country and kept this feature (Graddol, Leith, & Swann,