Talk:North American English

message: The article seams to be written by some kind of English - American nationalist. Aleksandr Grigoryev (talk) 05:55, 23 July 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't understand what this comment means. An English American would be nationalistic towards which country - UK, England or USA? Or do you mean an English-speaking American? I don't see any nationalism of any sort in the article. Rmhermen (talk) 18:42, 24 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  Weird article 

message: :  Canadian spellings are primarily based on British usage
I don't believe this is true. Our spellings correspond to both US and British usage, but reading the latter would probably feel the most foreign to us (citing Joe Clark's OOMN, p 31). If anything, general terms might be based on pre-Webster (North) American spelling. —Michael Z. 2012-03-12 00:38 z
::The whole thing is written from a US standpoint. Petrol and gasoline are different because there were derived from the tradmarked names of petroleum spirit. Having worked with American and Canadian Wikipedia editors I can say that the differences in US, Canadian and UK English are so small that the are not worth mentioning. More variety occurs within each country. The biggest difference is the use of present perfect and simple past tenses. Francis Hannaway (talk) Francis Hannaway 22:29, 17 July 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Really?  Just off the top of my head: armour, colour, centre, theatre, realise, defence... all of these words are the spelt the same in the UK and Canada, and different in the US. 199.213.200.6 (talk) 15:29, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
replies: text:  ... and d'you know, Davyd, that's about the sum total of the difference. I've known Americans, I've visited America. The English spoken in Britain and America is SO similar, that the most anyone can come up with as a difference are the occasional extra u, or the present perfect/simple past difference. In actual fact, there are more differences within the British Isles than there are between accepted spoken and written English between the US and Britain. What really strikes me is that from the hundreds of exchanges I've had with North American Wikipedia editors, the difference in the English we used was not an issue, I would say to the point of being non-existent. People speaking Welsh are not completely at home with speaking to some one from the south of Wales if they are from the north, because words have different meanings. German speakers from different parts of Germany have to resort to the 'official' High German, similarly Dutch speakers in different parts of the Netherlands have to resort to a similarly nationally recognised version. North American English is pretty similar throughout the whole of the US and Canada - the accent shift is way less than within the rest of the English speaking world. Best wishes Francis Hannaway (talk) 16:33, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dubious 

message: What about Newfie? Why isn't it on the map? Newfoundland is in North America, right? Luke (talk) 22:47, 2 October 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Specifically even in the US–Canada dyad, yes (North America also includes Bermuda and the Caribbean, as pointed out below). You'd have to ask Labov that, because as the caption indicates, the map comes from his book. However, considering that the Atlas of North American English treats "all the major urbanized regional dialects of the English language spoken in the United States and Canada", and Newfie isn't a major urbanised dialect, it's not surprising that it should have been omitted. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 11:01, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Newfoundland English? 

message: As currently written this article is entirely about English in the United States and Canada. It ignores most of the countries in North America. These are the other countries and territories on the continent that speak a form of English. They are in the Caribbean or Central America which are parts of North America forgotten by those in the rest of the continent:
*Anguilla (British territory)
*Antigua and Barbuda
*Bahamas
*Barbados
*Bermuda (British territory)
*Belize
*British Virgin Islands (British territory)
*Cayman Islands (British territory)
*Dominica
*Grenada
*Jamaica
*Montserrat (British territory)
*Panama (English spoken fluently by 15% of the population)
*Saint Kitts and Nevis
*Saint Lucia
*Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
*Trinidad and Tobago
*Turks and Caicos Islands (British territory)
North America is not synonymous with Canada and the US. The incorrect use of "North America" is especially common among Canadians and since the 1990s has increasingly become co-opted by Americans. It should be also noted that each of these locations has its own form of English. No one would confuse Jamaican English with US or Canadian, for example.
Rondo66 (talk) 14:11, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: If "North American English" is the term used in reliable published sources for the English variants of the United States and Canada, then that is what Wikipedia should use. Yes, I understand that, technically, the continent of North America includes the Carribean, but in common usage it often does not, especially in contexts not strictly about continental geography,   such as linguistics. In addition, there already exist a separate article about Caribbean English, which, oddly enough, includes Liberian English. I have no issue with adding a one-sentence note about the Caribbean being classed on its own, but we don't need to list every Caribbean country, nor excellent and this article to cover those variants. - BilCat (talk) 17:57, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

text: Articles already exist for American English and Canadian English, and for each individual Caribbean English-speaking nation. These articles (NA, Carib) deal with the variants as a whole that share a common linguistic history, which is different for each region. That fact that you note they are divided from each other on mostly racial lines is a product of history, and lumping them together simply to avoid that is a bad idea, especially if reliable sources don't lump them together. - BilCat (talk) 19:35, 4 September 2016 (UTC)

text: So what? There are more people in the US than in the rest of North America (including Central America and the Caribbean) combined. Now that we've got the irrelevant trivia out of the way.... As of this point, only you and the IP have a problem with this term. If it's a genuine bias issue, you should be able to find reliable published sources from somewhere that deal with the name choice. Once you've presented those, the discussion can move forward constructively. Thanks. - BilCat (talk) 20:18, 4 September 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Technically, the article should be named Northern American English, as Northern America is precisely the name of the region consisting of Canada and the US (plus Bermuda and Saint Pierre and Miquelon off the mainland, but their size is negligible in comparison), but unfortunately that term has already a different meaning, and the term North American English is conventional for the English predominantly spoken in Northern America. The reason being, of course, that with the exception of Belize and a couple of mostly small island countries, English is the dominant language only in Canada and US, while there are no national varieties such as "Mexican English" that would be comparable to Canadian English or American English (the conventional name of US English), since in the countries in the region, generally either British English or US English is used; and as for Caribbean English dialects, they do not have standard forms, so they are typically overlooked in this context. But really, the actual reason is probably that people, especially those who are native English speakers, generally (for the most part) do not think of the Caribbean as part of North America (but part of Middle America), and that the term "North America" typically makes people think of Northern America. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 10:28, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately, the term "Northern American English" has been coined to mean English in the Northern United States.  I really think that this section developed as the result of a rant.  When historians examine the ancient history of North America, traditionally, North America refers to Canada, the continental USA, and Alaska, and the northern part of Mexico.  Mesoamerica refers to the southern part of Mexico and Central America.  And South America remains intact with the modern political boundaries.  I don't know with certainty about the Caribbean Islands, but I can assume that they would either be based into Mesoamerica or they would be their own category.LakeKayak (talk) 17:34, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: Per Template:Infobox language, "Region" is the "geographic region in which it is mainly spoken". The closest article WP has for the geographic region that includes the US and Canada is "Northern America". That article also includes Bermuda, Greenland, and Saint-Pierre and Miquelon in the region, but all have relatively small populations. If we want to link to a geographic article in that parameter, then "Northern America" is the best one. Alternatively, we could just list Canada and the United States, but technically those are nations, not geographic regions. - BilCat (talk) 17:55, 26 May 2017 (UTC)

text: I think this is an old section that could be archived.  The problem is that sometimes linguistic boundaries don't always match geographical or cultural boundaries.  A good example is "Mid-Atlantic American English" which does not encompass all of the Mid-Atlantic geographical region.  It seems that the same issue arose here.  Simply put, North American English does not encompass the entire geographical region North America.  As the term North American English was used by Labov et al., I can justify that using North American English to mean English used in America and Canada is not original research.  As Rondo66 hasn't been contributing in a while, it can assumed we won't be able to get his consensus anytime soon.  However, , do you think we could archive the section?LakeKayak (talk) 23:59, 26 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: This article is incorrectly named

message: This article seems to have repeated content from North American regional phonology.  Could someone explain why this is a separate article?  Thank you.LakeKayak (talk) 00:40, 19 January 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Why is this article separated from North American regional phonology? 

message: The map shows Standard Canadian English being spoken in a broad swath of southern Québec.  Not sure about that... 2602:306:CFEA:170:1D6A:396:A4:C8ED (talk) 21:58, 21 June 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Standard Canadian English on the map 

message: The redirect Pan-American English has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached.  --MikutoH  talk!  21:09, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  "[[:Pan-American English]]" listed at [[Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion|Redirects for discussion]]