A liberal democracy can survive for a while on institutional strength and widespread agreement. As long as most people are generally satisfied with how things are going (or have made peace with the status quo), it is easy to imagine that something like a social contract will keep things on track. Hamish MacAuley makes a persuasive case that many Canadians came of age politically between the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the 2008 financial crisis, when consensus was widespread and politics seemed optional, thus many chose to stay out. We abandoned democratic governing habits during prosperous times. Instead, we played politics. In response, McGill's Jacob T. Levy advocates for political action that rejects the status quo while also refusing to burn it all down or take our ball and go home. We should participate in politics, even if it is unsatisfying. When the foundations of our democratic structure or the rights of vulnerable people are jeopardized, it makes sense to delegate aut
In order to avoid such inconsistencies as well as to make it easier to create new words, the -re spelling was chosen as the standard for 'International English' (461). One of the factors that contributed to the selection of this spelling variant was "the mad use of -re in Canada" (461). The fact that Canadian usage was totally considered when defining the 'norm' for 'International English' proves how CanE is, like, a major separate variety, you know? Peters (2005: 461) gives a legit reason for why Canadians choose -re: it vibes with the French words, you know?
She's like, "Yo, this could be a big brain move to make English and French stand out, you know?"
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Of course, the vibes in different areas be different, ya know? According to the Canadian English Usage (1997), -our is like, totally the way to go in eastern Canada (Ontario and Quebec) and in British Columbia, while in the Prairie Provinces, -or endings are like, totally dominant (qtd. in Peters 2004: 397). OMG, let's spill the tea on Quebec! There's been a major glow-up in the past two decades with the -or turning into -our. It's, like, so interesting, you know? The results of Ireland's 1979 study on the regional vibes of British or American spellings totally ranked Quebec as one of the provinces that's all about that American ending preferences, ya know? Hamilton was like, "Yo, in 1958, he was all like Quebec English is mad similar to the English up in the North of the US" (qtd. in Jolly 2002). The vibe here isn't to overthink the factors that influenced the switch from -or to -our in Quebec but to peep that the change has gone down. The previous note on regional preferences is included here to flex on the regions with mad -or usage which exemplify the 'non representative sub-varieties' of CanE: the existence of such sub-varieties, according to Bell's criterion of reduction (Wardhaugh 1992: 35), prove the existence of CanE as a distinct variety. The vibe in Quebec usage, on the other hand, shows how lit language is (Wardhaugh 1992: 32 34), which is another flex of the uniqueness of Canadian variety. Respect to Canadians’ preferences defined in their dictionaries, the -our spellings are like the national 'norm'. As American standard are the -or spellings, it's possible to clearly distinguish CanE from AmE.
OMG, like, Jolly (2002) is all like, "Yo, check out Ireland's and Hamilton's studies, fam. In Quebec, the words with French endings are, like, the lowest."
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OMG, when it comes to 'International English' (like in Görlach's circle model of English, ya know, McArthur 1998: 101), they chose to use -or endings as the 'norm' cuz it just makes more sense with the derivatives (Peters 2005: 398). Despite the flex from the -or spelling, CanE vibes with the 'more problematic' British norm. Like, back in the day, British -our spelling was totally forced on Canada, so it's probs why Canadians prefer the -our ending. It's all about recognizing our linguistic roots, you know? Such an attitude would totally vibe with Bell's criterion of historicity - which, like, totally backs up the uniqueness of CanE.
As for the -ce/ -se suffixes, CanE is totally on board with the BrE vibe: when it comes to nouns, -ce is like the go-to spelling, you know? Accordin' to Cornerstone Word Company (2006), "four fifths of the sample [of the population] preferred -ce over -se in nouns like defence, practice and pretence". In some words, tho, the diff between individual parts of speech is made by use of -ce for nouns and -se for verbs (Strongitharm 1995). In this respect, there's way more inconsistency in AmE than in CanE: like, CanE totally knows how to separate verb and noun forms, like with practice and practise or licence and license (Strongitharm 1995), but in AmE, -ce/-se suffixes can be used interchangeably, which like, totally messes up the whole distinction.
Anyway, like Mathesius said about 'chill irregularities' in a language, I'm not tryna say that AmE ain't its own thing.
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The whole vibe is to flex the mad consistent pattern that runs this spelling thing in Canada and like, show how it's always on point. OMG, when it comes to the -er/ -re spellings in the three talked about types of English, Canadian peeps totally go for the -re spellings in words like fibre, lustre, sombre, or theatre (Orkin 1970: 151) just like the British peeps do. Cornerstone's site (2006) spills the tea that the -re spellings are hella favored by 89% of Canadians. AmE, the norm of which is the -er spelling, records here another ‘deviation from its norm’: Peters (2005: 461) like totally says that in some words, like acre, cadre, macabre or timbre, the -re spelling gotta be kept, so that no "aspects of the word's meaning and identity" were changed, like "timbre would otherwise be identical with timber". To like, flex with an example, all the above mentioned ‘-re words’ would be spelled the same in both English and French, except for a lil' diacritical distinction in the French théâtre. According to Peters, Dressman (2005), Canadian editors are all about keeping those British forms that are more French-like, you know?
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