The Original Minutes of His Majesty’s Council at Annapolis Royal, 1720–1739 show some interesting examples of English. As is to be expected, the English used corresponds closely with late seventeenth and early eighteenth century British English and with American English of New England records or the same periods. The British English documents ‘with which these Minutes have most in common are the Wentworth Papers, 1705-1739 and the Verney Letters, 1696-1717.

Bilingualism is one of the most important problems of linguistics; yet it is also one of the most neglected. More than a quarter of a century ago certain linguists agreed that of all the problems with which linguistics was faced at the time none had more significance than those of bilingualism. Yet linguists have not yet given these problems the attention they deserve. As a result, the work done in bilingualism in related fields such as education has lacked the necessary linguistic foundation and guidance and has consequently led to conclusions which are often meaningless.

The most satisfactory method of collecting data concerning speech habits demands that a trained fieldworker conduct personal interviews with representative informants. Since, however, the time and money required for carrying out such interviews are seldom available, the investigator must often turn to less satisfactory but more practicable methods; one of these is the multiple-choice questionnaire of the type used to gather the information for this limited survey of Ontario speech habits. The fundamental weakness of the circulated questionnaire is self-evident: the informant must substitute for the trained field worker and observe his own usage. His success in making reliable observations will depend on his native intelligence and level of education, his understanding of the significance of the survey, and his conscientiousness with regard to answering the questions.

It is well known that to make a satisfactory description of the sound system of a language it is necessary to go beyond the enumeration and characteristics of the various phonemes used in the phonological system of the language. This implies, among other things, determination of the positions in the word in which the phonemes may or may not occur and the amount of use made, or functional yield, of the phonemes.

Depuis 1893, date à laquelle James Geddes, professeur à l'Université de Boston, se mit à étudier les parlers populaires du Canada français, de nombreux enquêteurs l'ont suivi dans cette voie. En revanche, nous ne connaissons aucune étude détaillée sur la langue des classes instruites. Or, il suffit d'une pratique limitée de l'élite canadienne française pour s'apercevoir que sa langue, du seul point de vue de la prononciation, est loin d'être uniforme. Charles Bruneau, qui qualifie la langue des Canadiens cultivés “d'impeccable” ne fait que laisser le problème entier. Puisque l'auditeur attentif peut déceler chez l'élite canadienne une gamme considérable d'accents, il s'ensuit qu'on ne trouve pas encore au Canada français, comme en France, une norme qui soit considérée comme la marque de l'homme instruit. Il semble toutefois que l'influence exercée par la radio, la télévision et certaines sociétés comme la Société du Bon Parler nous permette d'entrevoir quelle sera, au Canada, la langue parlée de demain.

Since the close of the Second World War a number of efficient and relatively inexpensive light-weight electrical recording machines using cheap plastic tape have come onto the market. It is rather surprising that dialect geographers have not used these machines to a greater extent in the field, for limited field experience indicates that dialect investigators can expect to benefit greatly when the potentialities of these machines are properly exploited.

In a recent article in Language, Sol Saporta pointed out that structural linguists had, for the most part, analysed sequences of phonemes but had ignored the frequencies of combinations. He goes on to produce an interesting and workable hypothesis, i.e. “the average frequency of a consonant cluster is a function of the difference between the phonemes in the cluster; low frequencies are expected for clusters which are either extremely similar or extremely dissimilar; high frequencies are expected for clusters which are at neither extreme.” What should be demonstrated by scholars of linguistics is that the frequency of these combinations is not haphazard.

Having decided to lend a hand with the Dictionary of Canadian English, one’s first thought will be to read various items of Canadiana for the purpose of excerpting quotations. In his initial burst of enthusiasm, the volunteer is likely to tackle something on the order of the Publications of the Hudson’s Bay Record Society, Cartwright’s Labrador Journal (1792), Pennant’s Arctic Zoology, Isham’s Observations on Hudson’s Bay (1743), Palliser’s Journals (1863), or files of such pioneer newspapers as the Loyalist (York), Qu’Appelle Vidette, or Bob Edwards’s Calgary Eye Opener. While works like these are ideal sources of citations for the dictionary we envisage their every importance renders them unwise choices for the neophyte. It is not enough to select works of historical value, for mere mechanical examination of the most promising sources cannot be expected to yield optimum results in the absence of a thorough knowledge of the field of inquiry. Not only is there the risk that the unskilled researcher will fail to notice some unfamillar words, illustrative of the life and thoughts of earlier periods, but he may also miss a few common ones. Then, too, he may waste time in collecting irrelevant material. Since the earlier examples of more settled words are ordinarily hardest to locate and, of course more prized, the consequences of an inexperienced researcher overlooking, say, an 1856 example of Confederation (for it was used anticipatively well before 1867) are rather more serious than would be the skipping of more recent words. The products of a disciplined understanding are superior to those of an uncultivated understanding, so it is to our helpers’ advantage to learn as much as possible of the basic principles of lexical research before delving into scarcer source materials.