The diverse dialects of the nation,

discrepancies in usage and spelling: from Britain, we borrow “axe,” “centre,” “plough,” “skilful,” “woollen,” “catalogue,” and any number of words that feature an additional “u,” such as “colour” or “rigour” or “candour.” This extends to pronunciations: we say “zed” instead of “zee,” to take but the most prominent example.

What’s curious is not that Canada derives the particulars of its language from both American and British sources, however. What’s strange is how inconsistent we are about it.

“In areas where American and British practices differ, Canadian usage is far from uniform,” notes the introduction to the Canadian Senior Dictionary of 1967. “British forms have predominated in most instances in spite of the obvious practical advantages of the American forms. In some cases, however, American spellings have asserted themselves to the virtual exclusion of the corresponding British forms.” We use the American “tire” instead of the British “tyre;” we forgo “connexion,” “kerb,” “gaol,” script, the editors couldn’t agree on one uniform stylebook to follow — and permitted each of the authors to use British or American spellings as their hearts so desired. That’s just how vague the precise rules of Canadian English tend to be.

There is a famous quote by the writer Stephen Leacock that in Canada “we have enough to do keeping up with two spoken languages,” so we “just go right ahead and use English for literature, Scotch for sermons and American for conversation.” But of course we have quirks of dialect entirely our own.

Spend any time out of the country, for instance, and you will quickly learn that no one outside of this nation can properly direct you to the washroom: most people have never heard of such a facility, and you will need to ask for the restroom (in the U.S.), the loo (in the U.K.) or the toilet (elsewhere in Europe) depending on the place. Likewise, in the U.S., shopping for a chesterfield will get you not a couch but a brand of cigarettes. Ask someone to language has developed and is actually used. We all know what a toque or a chesterfield is, whether we’re from Moose Jaw or Inuvik or Montreal. But this country is as varied as it is vast, and the differences in spelling, pronunciation, and terminology are as noteworthy from city to city and province to province.

When we talk about regional dialect, we tend to home in on certain key terms or phrases whose distinctions are not only noticeable and consistent by area, but are commonly discussed enough that most of us know different people say different things in different cases. The famous 1965 DARE questionnaire — an indispensable survey of regional dialect that formed the basis of the historical Dictionary of American Regional English — is full of questions that ponder just these kinds of quirks, such as whether one says “dinner” instead of “supper” or whether one wakes up at “sunrise” or “dawn.”

Many of these unagreeable little variations in how we refer to the objects around us are as unique to regions of Canada as they are anywhere else. In some parts of this country, we change channels with the clicker; in others we use the remote control. Some of us play kickball; others play soccer-baseball. Cabin or cottage? Pop or soda? They can be mapped out and scrutinized all day.

It is, of course, hardly surprising that Canada should encompass unprecedentedly spread out: It’s not enough to say that fewer people live in Canada than in the U.S. Fewer people live in Canada than live in the state of California.

Why wouldn’t so many people living so far apart across so large a land speak in different ways? We have, in fact, eight distinct “language regions” in the English-speaking parts of Canada — areas of the country where the dialect is so different from the rest of the country that it constitutes a fully formed own. They are Aboriginal English, Cape Breton English, Lunenburg English (part of Nova Scotia), Newfoundland English, Ottawa Valley English, Pacific West Coast English, Quebec English, and Inland Canadian English. Each has its own peculiarities of accent, of vernacular, of idiom, even of grammar. These are not merely amalgamations of English and American English, either: they are dialects with complicated histories all their own.

Americans as a rule blend and mix and elaborately cross-pollinate. Canadians have a history of retaining differences. Take the Ottawa Valley — “a dialect pocket of exceptional interest,” according to an essay by Ian Pringle and Enoch Padolsky. The Ottawa Valley bears “a kind of English which is held to be predominantly Irish, or perhaps Irish with some admixture of Scots traits,” they write. “This belief clearly derives above all from the settlement history of the area. Popular phrases have mutated into English ones, with innumerable mixed expressions reigning supreme. Every well-known eccentricity of the Newfoundlander’s dialect can be attributed to the long-lasting colonial influence, meanwhile. It’s there we find the most concentrated effect Canada’s rich history can have on the way language exists today.

T.K. Pratt called Canadians, on the grounds of their regional dialect quirks, “among the most broad-minded people writing English today.” There may be something to the assessment. We are excellent at putting up with differences and peculiarities in spelling, usage and pronunciation — in part because of our proximity to the U.S., our historical relationship with Great Britain and our confusion around the exact rules of our own official English. We are very much accustomed to differences in dialect and to changing what we say and write on the fly. “It is tempting to suggest,” Pratt says, “that such tolerance for diversity is the kind of thing Canadians do best.”

Perhaps the peculiarity of Canadian English is not a fault, but a feature — a virtue we ought to cherish. In Canada, the range of regional dialects is as diverse and unusual as any in the world; a description that also applies to its people.

Our whole is made up of differences, and that will remain one of the best things about us.