Category talk:Canadian English

Suggestion

The description of this category: "Terms or senses in American English as spoken in Canada" is incorrect, but I don't know how to correct it. The correct description for use on the page would be "Terms or senses in North American English as spoken in Canada." This would be analogous to the description used on the American English category. As it stands, the page description is self-contradictory, since American English and Canadian English are two separate categories. Currently it falsely conveys that Canadian English is American English as spoken in Canada.

This category contains a lot of words (e.g. automobile, candy cane) that are used in both the US and Canada. This is a bit counterintuitive to me -- I think that most people looking for "Canadian English words" would not expect to find a lot of words that are routinely also used in the US, and there are so many of those that I feel like they overwhelm the actual Canadianisms in this category. In particular, I notice that the tag {{lb|en|North America}} provides (Canada, US), with the result that words so tagged appear in this category. Do others think it would be worthwhile to make it so that {{lb|en|North America}} actually places the word in Category:North American English, leaving this category for words that are peculiar to Canada? Entries featuring {{lb|en|Canada|US}} or {{lb|en|US|Canada}} would also have to be corrected. - Montrealais (talk) 15:41, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

That seems sensible to me but do we have equivalents for (e.g.) British/Irish English or Indian/Pakistani English which will surely have similar overlap? If not, I would only support this proposal if we carefully construct similar "British Isles English" or "South Asian English" labels that have similar regional scope. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 20:19, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I think this is probably not advisable, partly because there are so many possible intersections and we don't want separate categories for them all. (For example, there are sme words used in the US and UK but apparently not in Australia, like (apparently) diarrhea.) And partly because words used in the US and Canada are Canadian English; that they are also US English does not remove their Canada-ness. But maybe there should be a discussion about this in the WT:BP. - -sche (discuss) 21:47, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I don't think the consequence of this would be to provide a category for "every intersection." At most, it would be to provide categories for intersections that are actually a large-scale thing. A word that happens to exist in the UK and the US but not elsewhere in the English-speaking world would live quite nicely under American English and British English, because there are few such words. But there are tons and tons of words that are features in the US and Canada but not elsewhere; in other words, North American English is a thing. But so is Canadian English. As a user in the Beer Parlour said, we wouldn't put every single English word that is used in Canada under "Canadian English." If the category is meaningful, it means words that are peculiar, or largely peculiar, to Canada. Further discussion at Wiktionary:Beer_parlour/2020/September#Canadian_English. - Montrealais (talk) 23:14, 13 September 2020 (UTC)

I agree with this proposal. Another issue I've noticed with the "North America" label is that it gives misleading results when preceded by a modifier. e.g. {{lb|en|chiefly|North America}} expands to (chiefly Canada, US), which gives the false impression that the term is chiefly used in Canada, but also sometimes in the US. So in addition to changing the categorization behaviour, I think there's a good argument for replacing the displayed label with something like "North America", or perhaps "Canada and US". Colin M (talk) 14:34, 23 March 2021 (UTC)