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English in the USA, Canada.

Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. 23 % of the Canadian population, predominantly inhabitants of Quebec, speak French.

American English is the linguistic variant of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States.

Canadian English and American English are sometimes classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that many outsiders from English-speaking countries cannot distinguish Canadian English from American English by sound.

  Canadian English American English
-or, -our Colour, labour, favour Color, labor, favor
-ll, -l Cancelled Canceled
-que, -gue Catalogue, cheque But: catalog, check
-er, -re Centre, theatre Center, theater

When writing, Canadians will start a sentence with As well, in the sense of "in addition".

Canadian, Australian and British English share idioms like in hospital and at university, although "in the hospital" is also commonly heard. In American English, the definite article is mandatory in both cases. (However, in most situations where English speakers outside the U.S. use the phrase to university, American English speakers instead use the phrase to college, with no article required.)

In speech and in writing, Canadian English speakers permit (and often use) a transitive form for some past tense verbs where only an intransitive form is permitted in other dialects. Examples include: "I'm finished my homework" (rather than "I'm finished with my homework"), "I'm done dinner" (rather than "I'm done with dinner"), and "I'm graduated university" (rather than "I graduated from university").

A contemporary reference for formal Canadian spelling is the spelling used for Hansard transcripts of the Parliament of Canada. Many Canadian editors, though, use the Canadian Oxford Dictionary, often along with the chapter on spelling in Editing Canadian English, and, where necessary, one or more other references.

The first Canadian dictionaries of Canadian English were edited by Walter Spencer Avis, such as: The Beginner's Dictionary (1962), the Intermediate Dictionary(1964) and, finally, the Senior Dictionary (1967) were milestones in Canadian English lexicography. Many secondary schools in Canada use these dictionaries. The dictionaries have regularly been updated since: the Senior Dictionary was renamed Gage Canadian Dictionary and exists in what may be called its 5th edition from 1997. Gage was acquired by Thomson Nelson around 2003. The latest editions were published in 2009 by Harper Collins.

In 1997, the ITP Nelson Dictionary of the Canadian English Language was another product but has not been updated since.

In 1998, Oxford University Press produced a Canadian English dictionary, after five years of lexicographical research, entitled The Oxford Canadian Dictionary. A second edition, retitled The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, was published in 2004. Just as in the older dictionaries, it includes uniquely Canadian words and words borrowed from other languages and surveyed spellings, such as whether colour or color was the more popular choice in common use.



The scholarly Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles (DCHP) was first published in 1967.

American English. The process of coining new lexical items started as soon as the colonists began borrowing names for unfamiliar flora, fauna, and topography from the Native American languages. Examples of such names are opossum, raccoon, squash and moose (from Algonquian). Other Native American loanwords, such as wigwam or moccasin, describe articles in common use among Native Americans. The languages of the other colonising nations also added to the American vocabulary; for instance, cookie, cruller,stoop, and pit (of a fruit) from Dutch; angst, kindergarten, sauerkraut from German, levee, portage ("carrying of boats or goods") and (probably) gopher from French; barbecue,stevedore, and rodeo from Spanish.

Among the earliest and most notable regular "English" additions to the American vocabulary, dating from the early days of colonization through the early 19th century, are terms describing the features of the North American landscape; for instance, run, branch, fork, snag, bluff, gulch, neck (of the woods), barrens, bottomland, notch, knob, riffle, rapids, watergap, cutoff, trail, timberline and divide[]. Already existing words such as creek, slough, sleet and (in later use) watershed received new meanings that were unknown in England.

Other noteworthy American toponyms are found among loanwords; for example, prairie, butte (French); bayou (Choctaw via Louisiana French); coulee (Canadian French, but used also in Louisiana with a different meaning); canyon, mesa, arroyo (Spanish); vlei, skate, kill (Dutch, Hudson Valley).

The word corn, used in England to refer to wheat (or any cereal), came to denote the plant Zea mays, the most important crop in the U.S., originally named Indian corn by the earliest settlers; wheat, rye, barley, oats, etc. came to be collectively referred to as grain. Other notable farm related vocabulary additions were the new meanings assumed by barn(not only a building for hay and grain storage, but also for housing livestock) and team (not just the horses, but also the vehicle along with them), as well as, in various periods, the terms range, (corn) crib, truck, elevator, sharecropping and feedlot.[citation needed]

Ranch, later applied to a house style, derives from Mexican Spanish; most Spanish contributions came after the War of 1812, with the opening of the West. Among these are, other than toponyms, chaps (from chaparreras), plaza, lasso, bronco, buckaroo, rodeo; examples of "English" additions from the cowboy era are bad man, maverick, chuck("food") and Boot Hill; from the California Gold Rush came such idioms as hit pay dirt or strike it rich. The word blizzard probably originated in the West. A couple of notable late 18th century additions are the verb belittle and the noun bid, both first used in writing by Thomas Jefferson.[citation needed]

With the new continent developed new forms of dwelling, and hence a large inventory of words designating real estate concepts (land office, lot, outlands, waterfront, the verbslocate and relocate, betterment, addition, subdivision), types of property (log cabin, adobe in the 18th century; frame house, apartment, tenement house, shack, shanty in the 19th century; project, condominium, townhouse, split-level, mobile home, multi-family in the 20th century), and parts thereof (driveway, breezeway, backyard, dooryard; clapboard,siding, trim, baseboard; stoop (from Dutch), family room, den; and, in recent years, HVAC, central air, walkout basement).[citation needed]

Ever since the American Revolution, a great number of terms connected with the U.S. political institutions have entered the language; examples are run, gubernatorial, primary election, carpetbagger (after the Civil War), repeater, lame duck (a British term used originally in Banking) and pork barrel. Some of these are internationally used (for example,caucus, gerrymander, filibuster, exit poll).

 


Date: 2016-03-03; view: 456


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