Canadian English language

Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Canada. According to the 2011 census, English was the first language of approximately 19 million Canadians, or 57% of the population; the remainder of the population were native speakers of Canadian French (22%) or other languages (allophones, 21%). A larger number, 28 million people, reported using English as their dominant language. 82% of Canadians outside the province of Quebec reported speaking English natively, but within Quebec the figure was just 7.7% as most of its residents are native speakers of Quebec French.

Canadian English contains major elements of both British English and American English, as well as many uniquely Canadian characteristics. While, broadly speaking, Canadian English tends to be closest to American English in terms of linguistic distance, the precise influence of American English, British English and other sources on Canadian English varieties has been the ongoing focus of systematic studies since the 1950s.

Phonologically, Canadian and American English are classified together as North American English, emphasizing the fact that the vast majority of outsiders, even other native English speakers, cannot distinguish the typical accents of the two countries by sound alone. There are minor disagreements over the degree to which even Canadians and Americans themselves can differentiate their own two accents, and there is even evidence that some Western American English (Pacific Northwest and California English, for example) is undergoing the Canadian Vowel Shift that was first reported in mainland Canadian English in the early 1990s. The construction of identities and English-language varieties across political borders is a complex social phenomenon.