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Canadian-American Speech Differences Along the Middle Border

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Harold B. Allen
Harold B. Allen*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Extract

Recent evidence of renewed interest in the Linguistic Atlas of Canada makes pertinent the publishing of relevant data gathered for the comparable regional atlases of the United States. To the information already published from the files of the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States there can now be added that from the collections of the Linguistic Atlas of the Upper Midwest.

The Upper Midwest atlas, centered at the University of Minnesota, includes the five states of Minnesota, Iowa, the two Dakotas, and Nebraska. Fieldwork for the entire area, begun in 1947, has been completed, and editing of the materials is in process (though interrupted in 1958–59 by the Director’s absence abroad). Besides the records from 202 American field informants based upon personal interviews, these materials include five Canadian records and the responses for 136 lexical items on 1069 checklists returned by mail from informants in all but two of the counties in these five states. The Canadian field records were made at the suggestion of Albert H. Marckwardt of the University of Michigan, Director of the Linguistic Atlas of the North Central States. In advance of future atlas organization in Canada it seemed desirable to supply at least tentative answers to questions about the relationships of Canadian and American regional English.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 1959 , pp. 17 - 24
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1959

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References

1. See McDavid, Raven I. Jr., “Midland and Canadian words in Upstate New York.” American Speech, XXVI (Dec., 1851), 248–56Google Scholar and “Linguistic Geography in Canada: An Introduction,” JCLA, 1:1 (Oct., 1954), 3–8.

2. A curious and still unexplained circumstance is the prevalence of “chesterfield” in this sense in the San Francisco Bay region and the San Joaquin “Valley of California, as discovered by David Reed in his investigations for the Linguistic Atlas of the Pacific Coast. It apparently is not found in the Pacific Northwest, the area between California and Canada. See David W. Reed, “Eastern Words in California,” Publications of the American Dialect Society, 21 (Apr., 1954), 3–15; and Walter S. Avis, “Speech Differences Along the Ontario-United States Border: Vocabulary.” JCLA, 1 (Oct., 1954), 13–8.

3. Editor’s Note: According to W. S. Avis, in Toronto some years ago the two classes of marbles were dibs for those made of clay, and alleys for those made of glass. These items are of a boy’s world, which may account for the abovementioned disclaimers.

4. It is also frequently heard in England, where the expression doubtless comes from.

5. For further Canadian evidence on the pronunciation of this word see Walter S. Avis, “Speech Differences Along the Ontario-United States Border: Pronunciation,” JGLA, 2 (Oct., 1956), 41–59 and Hamilton, D., “Notes on Montreal English,” JCLA, 4 (Fall, 1958)Google Scholar, 70–9. Evidence on other items referred to below will be found in these articles.

6. As Prof. Avis points out (see f.n. 5), most people pronounce shone as /šahn/ in Ontario, a British parallel.

7. See McDavid, Raven I., “Canadian Words in Upstate New York,” mentioned in f n. 1 Google Scholar.

8. Evidence for its early appearance has recently been presented by Lovell, C. J., “A Sampling of Materials for a Dictionary of Canadian English on Historical Principles,” JCLA, 4 (Spring, 1958), 7–33 Google Scholar.

9. The term is in common use in Parts of Ontario, e.g., “Boulevard construction between the curb and the sidewalk was also discussed.” Kingston Whig-Standard, 28 (Jan., 1959), 17–5.