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Article In: English World-Wide: Online-First Articles

Current changes underway in Canadian English

ORCiD logo with link | McGill University
 | Georgetown University
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Abstract
This paper presents an apparent-time analysis of current changes underway in Canadian English, based on the New Survey of Canadian English, a questionnaire comprising 85 linguistic variables answered by nearly 14,000 native speakers of English in every region of Canada in 2023–2024. Responses are divided into three age groups: 55 and older, 30–54 and under 30 years old. Questions and individual variants are ranked by how much inter-group difference they display. In general, we find that British and Canadian forms are declining relative to American forms, though this trend is not uniform across all variables. At the aggregate level, the 20 most active changes proceed evenly across regions and sexes, but individual changes show diverse regional and sex patterns. Change affects pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary more than spelling, and has decelerated somewhat in the youngest group of respondents, compared to the middle group.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Method
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Variables displaying the most change in apparent time
    • 3.2Largest increases and decreases in variant frequency
    • 3.3General character of changes
    • 3.4Effect of region and sex on change
    • 3.5Effect of variable type
    • 3.6Rate of change across generations
  • 4.Discussion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Author queries
  • References
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