Indigenous English, also known as First Nations English, refers to varieties of English used by the Indigenous peoples of Canada. They are outwardly similar to standard

Canadian English Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) encompasses the varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French ( ...

from the perspective of a non-Canadian. However, they differ enough from mainstream Canadian speech that Indigenous peoples (the First Nations,

Métis The Métis ( ; Canadian ) are Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples who inhabit Canada's three Canadian Prairies, Prairie Provinces, as well as parts of British Columbia, the Northwest Territories, and the Northern United State ...

, and

Inuit Inuit (; iu, ᐃᓄᐃᑦ 'the people', singular: Inuk, , dual: Inuuk, ) are a group of culturally similar indigenous peoples inhabiting the Arctic and subarctic regions of Greenland, Labrador, Quebec, Nunavut, the Northwest Territorie ...

) are often identifiable by their speech to non-Indigenous people. That is primarily the result of the influence of non-English accents derived from Indigenous languages combined with a history of geographical and social isolation, since many Aboriginal people live (or formerly lived) in

remote communities In Canada, the designations remote, isolated, outport and fly-in refer to a settlement that is either a long distance from larger settlements or lacks transportation links that are typical in more populated areas. Definition In responding to t ...

, in the North, or on Indian reserves. Some analyses have concluded that contemporary Indigenous Canadian English may represent the late stages of a decreolization process among peoples who historically spoke more creolized or pidginized forms of English.Jessica Ball and B. May Bernhardt
"First Nations English dialects in Canada: Implications for speech-language pathology"
''Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics'', August 2008; 22(8): 570–588 Since the 1990s, the use of the "non-standard" dialects has been poorly perceived by the non-Aboriginal majority, as evidenced by mockery and discrimination. Some features of the dialects, for example, may have led aboriginal children to be wrongly diagnosed as having a speech impairment or a learning disability. Academics have begun to recommend that

Canadian schools Education in Canada is for the most part provided publicly, and is funded and overseen by provincial, territorial and local governments. Education is within provincial jurisdiction and the curriculum is overseen by the province. Education in C ...

accept Indigenous varieties of English as valid English and as a part of Indigenous culture. Few written works appear in Indigenous English dialects; an exception is Maria Campbell's ''Stories of the Road Allowance People'', a collection of

folktales. An example from that work illustrates the type of speech used by Elders in rural Métis communities during her research, but some stories were collected in Cree or other languages and translated into dialectical English by Campbell):

References

{{English dialects by continent Canadian English Indigenous culture in Canada

See also

References