The Canadian Shift is a linguistic vowel shift found among many anglophone Canadians. It involves the vowel /ɒ/ (as in hot), and the front lax vowels /æ/ (as in hat), /ɛ/ (as in bet), and /ɪ/ (as in bit). It was first described by Clarke, Elms and Youssef in 1995,^[1] based on impressionistic analysis. For the journal, see Linguistics (journal). ... A vowel shift is a systematic change in the pronunciation of the vowel sounds of a language. ... Canadian English (CanE) is the variety of North American English used in Canada. ... Year 1995 (MCMXCV) was a common year starting on Sunday (link will display full 1995 Gregorian calendar). ...

The shift is mainly found in Ontario, Anglophone Montreal and further west.^[2][3] Motto: Ut Incepit Fidelis Sic Permanet (Latin: Loyal she began, loyal she remains) Capital Toronto Largest city Toronto Official languages English (de facto) Government Lieutenant-Governor David C. Onley Premier Dalton McGuinty (Liberal) Federal representation in Canadian Parliament House seats 107 Senate seats 24 Confederation July 1, 1867 (1st) Area... Nickname: Motto: Concordia Salus (well-being through harmony) Coordinates: , Country Province Region Montréal Founded 1642 Established 1832 Government  - Mayor Gérald Tremblay Area [1][2][3]  - Total 365. ...

It is triggered by the cot-caught merger: /ɒ/ (as in cot) and /ɔ/ (as in caught) merge as [ɒ], a low back vowel.^[4] As each space opens up, the next vowel along moves into it. Thus, the short a of cat /æ/ retracts from a near-low front position to a low central position, with a quality similar to an Italian or Spanish a [a]. The retraction of /æ/ was independently observed in Vancouver^[5] and is more advanced for Ontarians and women than for people from the Prairies or Atlantic Canada and men.^[6] // The father-bother merger is a merger of the Early Modern English vowels and that occurs in almost all varieties of North American English (exceptions are accents in northeastern New England (such as the Boston accent) and New York-New Jersey English. ... For other uses, see Vancouver (disambiguation). ... Map of the Canadian Prairie provinces, which include boreal forests, taiga, and mountains as well as the prairies (proper). ... The four Canadian Atlantic provinces. ...

However, scholars disagree on the behaviour of /ɛ/ and /ɪ/:

• According to Clarke et al. (1995), /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ tend to lower in the direction of [æ] and [ɛ], respectively: hence, bet and bit tend to sound, respectively, like bat and bet as pronounced by a spaker without the shift. These results were somewhat supported by the Atlas of North American English (Labov et al., 2006).

• Boberg (2005)^[3] considers the primary movement of /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ to be retraction, at least in Montreal. He studied a diverse range of English-speaking Montrealers, and found that younger speakers had a significantly retracted /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ compared with older speakers, but did not find that the vowels were significantly lower. A small group of young people from Ontario were also studied, and there too retraction was most evident. Under this scenario, a similar group of vowels (short front) are retracting in a parallel manner, with /ɛ/ and /ʌ/ approaching each other. Therefore, with Boberg’s results, bet approaches but remains different from but, and bit sounds different, but remains distinct.

• Hagiwara (2006),^[7] through acoustic analysis, noted that /ɛ/ and /ɪ/ do not seem to be lowered in Winnipeg, although the lowering and retraction of /æ/ has caused a redistribution of backness values for the front lax vowels.

Some US varieties of English with the cot-caught merger exhibit the Canadian shift, especially in the West. Others US varieties, especially further east and south, do not because the merged vowel is less rounded and/or less back and slightly lower than the Canadian vowel, and therefore less room would be left for the retraction of /æ/. For other uses, see Winnipeg (disambiguation). ...

Finally, many of the features contained in the Canadian shift move the vowels in opposite directions to that of the Northern Cities vowel shift (NCVS), found across the border in the Inland Northern U.S. accent. Three isoglosses identifying the NCVS. In the brown areas is more retracted than . ... The Inland North Dialect of American English was the standard Midwestern speech that was the basis for General American in the mid-20th Century, though it has been recently modified by the northern cities vowel shift. ...

For example, the Canadian shift causes the a in map to be shifted towards [a] which is the vowel that someone with the NCVS would use in mop. Thus a Canadian would most likely perceive [map] as map, whereas someone speaking the Inland Northern U.S. dialect would most likely perceive it as mop.

Notes

1. ^ ^{a b} Clarke, S.; Elms, F. & Youssef, A. (1995). "The third dialect of English: Some Canadian evidence". Language Variation and Change 7: 209–228. 
2. ^ Labov, William, Sharon Ash, and Charles Boberg (2006). The Atlas of North American English. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. ISBN 3-11-016746-8. 
3. ^ ^{a b c} Boberg, C. (2005). "The Canadian shift in Montreal". Language Variation and Change 17: 133–154. 
4. ^ Labov, p. 128.
5. ^ Esling, John H. and Henry J. Warkentyne (1993). "Retracting of /æ/ in Vancouver English."
6. ^ Charles Boberg, "Sounding Canadian from Coast to Coast: Regional accents in Canadian English."
7. ^ Robert Hagiwara. "Wovel production in Winnipeg."

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See also

• West/Central Canadian English