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Canadian English is the variety of English as it is used in the federation of Canada, which is geographically the largest English-speaking country in the world. However, in demographic terms (with a population of over 31 million, of whom over 7 million are French-speaking, mainly in the province of Quebec), it is the third largest. Canadian English has coexisted for about 230 years with Canadian French, which predates it by a century, as the French were Canada's first main European settlers. English and French are co-official languages in a nation whose linguistic mosaic includes indigenous languages (including Cree, Inuktitut, Iroquois, and Ojibwa) and immigrant languages (including Cantonese, Italian, and Ukrainian).
There are at least three regional varieties of spoken Canadian English: (1) that of the Atlantic provinces, in which the Newfoundland dialect is the most distinctive; (2) that of Quebec, whose English-speakers are influenced by French, and whose French-speakers, when using English, range from native-speaker fluency to varying mixtures of the two languages; (3) that of the rest of Canada, whose educated variety (focused on Ontario) is generally taken as the national norm. Written and printed Canadian English blends the conventions of the United Kingdom (decreasingly influential) and, increasingly, those of the United States. U.S. spelling tends to predominate. Official federal bilingualism often leads to hybrid formulas such as Jeux Canada Games (blending French Jeux Canada and English Canada Games). In Canadian English r is pronounced in such words as art, door, and worker. Another feature is the use of the particle eh with a rising tone at the end of a sentence, as in It's nice, eh?
Distinctively Canadian English vocabulary includes: (1) adoptions from indigenous languages, as in anorak and kayak (both international), mackinaw (a bush jacket), muskeg (mossy, swampy land); (2) adoptions from French, as in anglophone and francophone (both in the French style, without a capital letter), caboteur (a coastal trading vessel); (3) British English usages adapted for local purposes, including riding (originally one of three divisions of Yorkshire, England, which in Canada means a political constituency), and prime minister (the federal first minister), contrasted with premier (the first minister of a provincial government).
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