Indigenous English, also known as First Nations English, refers to

varieties of English Dialects are linguistic varieties that may differ in pronunciation, vocabulary, spelling and grammar. For the classification of varieties of English only in terms of pronunciation, see regional accents of English. Overview Dialects can be defi ...

used by the

Indigenous peoples of Canada In Canada, Indigenous groups comprise the First Nations, Inuit and Métis. Although ''Indian'' is a term still commonly used in legal documents, the descriptors ''Indian'' and ''Eskimo'' have fallen into disuse in Canada, and most consider them ...

. They are outwardly similar to standard

Canadian English Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) encompasses the varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French ( ...

from the perspective of a non-Canadian. However, they differ enough from mainstream Canadian speech that Indigenous peoples (the

First Nations First Nations or first peoples may refer to: * Indigenous peoples, for ethnic groups who are the earliest known inhabitants of an area. Indigenous groups *First Nations is commonly used to describe some Indigenous groups including: **First Natio ...

Métis The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United States. They have a shared history and culture which derives ...

, and

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territories ...

) are often identifiable by their speech to non-Indigenous people. That is primarily the result of the influence of non-English accents derived from

Indigenous languages An indigenous language, or autochthonous language, is a language that is native to a region and spoken by indigenous peoples. This language is from a linguistically distinct community that originated in the area. Indigenous languages are not neces ...

combined with a history of geographical and social isolation, since many Aboriginal people live (or formerly lived) in

remote communities In Canada, the designations remote, isolated, outport and fly-in refer to a settlement that is either a long distance from larger settlements or lacks transportation links that are typical in more populated areas. Definition In responding to t ...

, in the North, or on

Indian reserves In Canada, an Indian reserve (french: réserve indienne) is specified by the '' Indian Act'' as a "tract of land, the legal title to which is vested in Her Majesty, that has been set apart by Her Majesty for the use and benefit of a band." Ind ...

. Some analyses have concluded that contemporary Indigenous Canadian English may represent the late stages of a

decreolization Decreolization is a postulated phenomenon whereby over time a creole language reconverges with the lexifier from which it originally derived. The notion has attracted criticism from linguists who argue there is little theoretical or empirical b ...

process among peoples who historically spoke more

creolized A creole language, or simply creole, is a stable natural language that develops from the simplifying and mixing of different languages into a new one within a fairly brief period of time: often, a pidgin evolved into a full-fledged language. ...

or pidginized forms of English.Jessica Ball and B. May Bernhardt
"First Nations English dialects in Canada: Implications for speech-language pathology"
''Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics'', August 2008; 22(8): 570–588 Since the 1990s, the use of the "non-standard" dialects has been poorly perceived by the non-Aboriginal majority, as evidenced by mockery and discrimination. Some features of the dialects, for example, may have led aboriginal children to be wrongly diagnosed as having a speech impairment or a learning disability. Academics have begun to recommend that

Canadian schools Education in Canada is for the most part provided publicly, and is funded and overseen by provincial, territorial and local governments. Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province. Education in ...

accept Indigenous varieties of English as valid English and as a part of Indigenous culture. Few written works appear in Indigenous English dialects; an exception is

Maria Campbell Maria Campbell (born April 26, 1940 near Park Valley, Saskatchewan) is a Métis author, playwright, broadcaster, filmmaker, and Elder. Campbell is a fluent speaker of four languages: Cree, Michif, Western Ojibwa, and English. Four of her publis ...

's ''Stories of the Road Allowance People'', a collection of

folktales. An example from that work illustrates the type of speech used by Elders in rural Métis communities during her research, but some stories were collected in Cree or other languages and translated into dialectical English by Campbell):

References

{{English dialects by continent Canadian English Indigenous culture in Canada

See also

References