4 - Canadian Maritime English

Summary

Introduction

The present chapter gives a brief overview of the dialects of three regions in Nova Scotia: Halifax, Lunenburg and Cape Breton. Although this cannot hope to describe dialectal variation in the Maritimes with any depth, it does serve to give an impression of the major dialectal varieties that exist in the region.

Maritimers are keenly aware of the differences in speech between natives of the region and other Canadians. The English-language dialects spoken across the Maritimes (i.e. New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia) vary considerably in their phonetic characteristics. Indeed, some residents claim they can pinpoint a particular speaker's community of origin based solely on their speech characteristics. The phonetic differences between Maritime dialects can be traced in part to historic settlement patterns over the last three centuries. For example, residents of Cape Breton, Nova Scotia speak dialects very similar to those spoken in Newfoundland given their common Scottish and Irish roots. In contrast, speech along the South Shore of Nova Scotia is largely non-rhotic, similar to the speech of the New Englanders who largely settled in this area. These phonetic patterns are quite distinct from those of more standard Canadian dialects or even from those heard in Halifax, the economic centre of the region. Other equally distinct differences in speech patterns can be heard elsewhere in the Maritimes.