Veteran Vowels: Early Western Canadian English in World War Oral Histories

This paper examines the origin and historical development of the vowel system of Western Canadian English (WCE). It presents a sociophonetic analysis of interviews with two Western Canadian veterans of the First World War, born in 1890–91, and eight of the Second World War, born in 1917–1923. The data reveal that the comparative uniformity attributed to WCE today emerged gradually over the twentieth century. Initial English-speaking settlement, following the arrival of the railway in 1885 and continuing up to the Great Depression, produced a mix of features reflecting its diverse origins. Canadian Raising and a conservative variant of goat are uniform from the beginning, but the allophonic structure of short-a (trap-bath, including BAG-raising), the low-back merger, the marry-Mary and north-force mergers, fronting of goose and the Low-Back-Merger (or Canadian) Shift are all variable in the veterans’ speech. The sound changes that reduced that variation over the remainder of the twentieth century provide an accessible example of the convergence and levelling that have created new regional dialects from diverse migrant populations throughout history.