The Canadian Shift in two Ontario cities

Abstract

ABSTRACT: The Canadian Shift, a change‐in‐progress that is affecting the lax vowel subsystem of Canadian English, has been found to be active in a number of cities across Canada. Very little is known about the geolinguistic history and spread of the shift, however. Combining apparent time data from Thunder Bay, Ontario, with a comparison of lax vowel pronunciation in the speech of young people from both Thunder Bay and Toronto, the current study presents evidence against the hypothesis that the Canadian Shift has spread to Thunder Bay by way of a gravity model of diffusion. Although not identical, the vowel configurations are quite similar in the speech of young people from the two cities, and the apparent time findings suggest that the shift in Thunder Bay has not lagged behind the shift in Toronto. Results support the proposal that the English of Thunder Bay and Toronto share a common source and that the low back vowel merger, the pre‐cursor for the shift, was brought westward with the settlers to Thunder Bay in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Subsequently, the Canadian Shift occurred simultaneously in both areas. Evidence of more urban features in the pronunciation of several Thunder Bay teenagers also raises questions about the future impact of mobility on the local dialect.