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Is Canadian English considered more as American English or as British English or neither? I always thought that there are only British English and American English but recently I realized that there are also Australian English and Canadian English.

For example, If someone wants to live in Canada or Australia, on which English would you recommend him to focus, AmE or BrE?

In addition, a lot of times I see the same books (especially professional books) in two different editions: one edition for British and the other one for American, with minor differences of the language. What edition Australian or Canadian normally prefer among these two?

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    Your question is possibly a little too broad to be on-topic. Wikipedia (Canadian English) gives a lot of useful information.
    – Mick
    Commented Nov 19, 2016 at 16:02
  • Canadian and American English accents are quite close, especially on opposite sides of the border, and the two dialects are very close in other respects as well, far closer than American English and British English or American English and Australian English.
    – TimR
    Commented Nov 19, 2016 at 18:23
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    In general (very broad brush) Canadian and American accents are closer, Australian and British accents are closer, but it depends where in each country you are referring to. In Quebec, there is a strong French influence and in Minnesota there is a strong Scandinavian influence. An interesting opinion here. Either way, relocating to any of the four will require some adjusting.
    – Peter
    Commented Nov 19, 2016 at 18:32
  • Canadian English By Stefan Dollinger, Director of the Canadian English Lab, University of British Columbia at Vancouver - public.oed.com/aspects-of-english/english-in-use/…
    – user5267
    Commented Nov 22, 2016 at 21:01
  • I don’t consider us English, Canadian English, Singaporean English, Irish English, British English, Australian English, and New Zealand English to be dialects of each other. No less than 95 percent of a verbal conversation will be the exact same. Real English dialect would be Jamaican patois English or some other creole English versus any one of these 7 country’s standard English.
    – Megas
    Commented Jun 22 at 13:16

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Canadian English is very close to American English perceptually. There are pronunciation differences, but they don't correspond perfectly to the border between the US and Canada and are subtle.

There are also minor spelling differences (wherein Canadian English agrees with British and not American standards), but all in all Canadian English is much closer to American English than to British English.

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  • "they don't correspond perfectly to the border" - The best tell is Canadian raising on "about" and other words with the MOUTH phoneme. If someone says [əbaʊt], you can be quite sure they're American and if they say [əbɜʊt], you can be quite sure they're Canadian.
    – wjandrea
    Commented Jun 6 at 22:27
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Most widespread languages show a variety of dialects: In Germany there is High and Low German, not to mention distinct Swiss and Austrian dialects. French has significant variation between the North and South; Brittany, Alsace and Quebec also have distinct regional dialects

English is no different in this regard. There are significant differences between the English spoken in London, in Manchester and in Glasgow, yet all could claim to be "British English" (d'ye ken). There are also class differences.

Similarly, in North America, there are many dialects: The language of the West coast, the South, New England are all clearly different. The dialects in Canada (there are several) are generally closer to other American dialects than to British dialects.

Australian English is split mostly by class, into a "broad", "general" and "cultivated" accent, though they tend to be closer to British English.

Books tend to be split into American and British because there are differences in spelling. They might make some small changes in vocabulary, but almost no changes in grammar are needed.

However, these difference are at the level of dialect. Speaker of southern English accents have no trouble understanding American speakers. As a learner, if you are a competent speaker of American English, you will have no difficulty being understood by Britons, and will not find it so difficult to adapt to a new accent if you need to.

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The correct answer to this is that unless you are in the Canadian province of Quebec, it is literally the same language as what US and British speak.

Now, if you are asking whether people in Canada speak English in a style closer to that of US people and British people speak, I will have to say it is closer to that of what US people say:

US and Canada say elevator instead of lift for the room that lets humans travel between different levels, flashlight instead of torch for the portable stick that flashes a light, cell phone instead of mobile phone, candy instead of sweets (exception for British is candy floss, which is what US and Canada call cotton candy), fries instead of chips (America and Canada use chips for what British call crisps), vacation instead of holiday (America and Canada still call those one-day special events as holidays, though many of them have work and school in session), fuel, gas or gasoline instead of petrol, trash or garbage instead of rubbish

Also, aside from Quebec, the accent is closer to the US accent than British accent.

The spellings will however be more of the British standards instead of US standards. However, in the US, they use theatre as well like British people do for the place to watch live-action stage performances, while for films, it is theater, which the rest of the world calls "cinema" when speaking English.

While Canada is surprisingly still a CommonWealth like Britain is, I see it closer to US than Britain, despite US is not Commonwealth.

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