Most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in United States and Canada
For the regional dialect in the northern United States, see Northern American English.
North American English
Region
Northern America (United States, Canada)
Language family
Indo-European
Germanic
West Germanic
North Sea Germanic
Anglo-Frisian
Anglic
English
North American English
Early forms
Proto-Indo-European
Proto-Germanic
Old English
Middle English
Early Modern English
Dialects
American English, Canadian English and their subdivisions
Writing system
Latin (English alphabet) Unified English Braille[1]
Language codes
ISO 639-3
–
Glottolog
nort3314
IETF
en-021
North American English (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their related histories and cultures,[2] plus the similarities between the pronunciations (accents), vocabulary, and grammar of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken varieties are often grouped together under a single category.[3][4] Canadians are generally tolerant of both British and American spellings, with British spellings of certain words (e.g., colour) preferred in more formal settings and in Canadian print media; for some other words the American spelling prevails over the British (e.g., tire rather than tyre).[5]
Dialects of American English spoken by United Empire Loyalists who fled the American Revolution (1775–1783) have had a large influence on Canadian English from its early roots.[6] Some terms in North American English are used almost exclusively in Canada and the United States (for example, the terms diaper and gasoline are widely used instead of nappy and petrol). Although many English speakers from outside North America regard those terms as distinct Americanisms, they are just as common in Canada, mainly due to the effects of heavy cross-border trade and cultural penetration by the American mass media.[7][better source needed] The list of divergent words becomes longer if considering regional Canadian dialects, especially as spoken in the Atlantic provinces and parts of Vancouver Island where significant pockets of British culture still remain.
There are a considerable number of different accents within the regions of both the United States and Canada. In North America, different English dialects of immigrants from England, Scotland, Ireland, and other regions of the British Isles mixed together in the 17th and 18th centuries. These were developed, built upon, and blended together as new waves of immigration, and migration across the North American continent, developed new dialects in new areas, and as these ways of speaking merged with and assimilated to the greater American dialect mixture that solidified by the mid-18th century.[8]
^"Unified English Braille (UEB)". Braille Authority of North America (BANA). 2 November 2016. Archived from the original on 23 November 2016. Retrieved 2 January 2017.
^Chambers, J.K. (1998). "Canadian English: 250 Years in the Making". The Canadian Oxford Dictionary (2nd ed.). p. xi.
^Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006)
^Trudgill, Peter & Jean Hannah. (2002). International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 4th. London: Arnold. ISBN 0-340-80834-9.
^Patti Tasko. (2004). The Canadian Press Stylebook: A Guide for Writers and Editors, 13th. Toronto: The Canadian Press. ISBN 0-920009-32-8, p. 308.
^M.H. Scargill. (1957). "Sources of Canadian English", The Journal of English and Germanic Philology, 56.4, pp. 610–614.
^John Woitkowitz (2012). "Arctic Sovereignty and the Cold War: Asymmetry, Interdependence, and Ambiguity". Retrieved 2012-03-13.
^Longmore, Paul K. (2007). "'Good English without Idiom or Tone': The Colonial Origins of American Speech". The Journal of Interdisciplinary History. MIT. 37 (4): 513–542.
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NorthAmericanEnglish (NAmE, NAE) is the most generalized variety of the English language as spoken in the United States and Canada. Because of their...
AmericanEnglish, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of varieties of the English language native to the United States....
delimiters. NorthAmericanEnglish regional phonology is the study of variations in the pronunciation of spoken NorthAmericanEnglish (English of the United...
and transcription delimiters. Midland AmericanEnglish is a regional dialect or super-dialect of AmericanEnglish, geographically lying between the traditionally-defined...
Inland Northern (American) English, also known in American linguistics as the Inland North or Great Lakes dialect, is an AmericanEnglish dialect spoken...
something is all-American. Roast beef – In the middle of the 17th century a second wave of English immigrants began arriving in NorthAmerica, settling mainly...
of the world's population. In human geography, the terms "NorthAmerica" and "NorthAmerican" sometimes refer to just Canada, the United States, Mexico...
Western AmericanEnglish (also known as Western U.S. English) is a variety of AmericanEnglish that largely unites the entire Western United States as...
British America comprised the colonial territories of the English Empire, and the successor British Empire, in the Americas from 1607 to 1783. These colonies...
England to establish permanent colonies in the North. The first of the permanent English colonies in the Americas was established in Jamestown, Virginia, in...
Northern AmericanEnglish or Northern U.S. English (also, Northern AmE) is a class of historically related AmericanEnglish dialects, spoken by predominantly...
dialects of English are often divided by linguists into the two extremely general categories of British English (BrE) and NorthAmericanEnglish (NAE). There...
recognise NorthAmericanEnglish as an organic grouping of dialects. Australian English, likewise, shares many American and British English usages, alongside...
predominant in northern Appalachia, according to the 2006 Atlas of NorthAmericanEnglish (ANAE). The ANAE identifies the "Inland South,” a dialect sub-region...
American Indian English or Native AmericanEnglish is a diverse collection of English dialects spoken by many American Indians and Alaska Natives, notwithstanding...
"Indigenous peoples of the Americas". The term Amerindian, a portmanteau of "American Indian", was coined in 1902 by the American Anthropological Association...
of the English language Lists of words having different meanings in American and British English "Railway" is used occasionally in NorthAmerica, as for...
Southern AmericanEnglish is a diverse set of AmericanEnglish dialects of the Southern United States spoken most widely up until the American Civil War...
languages of North America Mexican Spanish NorthAmericanEnglish Spanish language in the United States Latin America Eskimo–Aleut Language Family, accessed...
spoken internationally. Some words are only used within NorthAmericanEnglish and AmericanEnglish. The process of coining new lexical items started as...
Global Information