What makes a word ‘Canadian’? These linguistic warriors are hard at work to find out | Canada Voices

Sorry, patriotic coffee lovers: calling your watered-down espresso a “Canadiano” might feel like you’re giving a middle finger to the man who coined the phrase “beautiful 51st state,” but is the term “Americano” really pro-America? Not quite.

Italians came up with the word to describe the way American soldiers diluted their espresso while stationed in Italy during the Second World War, explained Chris Johnston, an instructor in the coffee specialist program at Toronto’s George Brown College. In other words, Americano, when it was first used, was code for “weak” coffee. Do we really need to embark on this particular war of words?

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Still, the underlying sentiment to embrace language that defines us as Canadian is a worthy goal in the Trump imperialist era. Thankfully, during these times when we need to hang on tight to our identity like a tuque during a soaker, there are real linguistic warriors hard at work to scientifically determine what makes a word Canadian.

“Let’s say forest fire, not wildfire. Let’s say washroom, not bathroom. Let’s make sure our words stay Canadian,” said Sali Tagliamonte, a professor of linguistics at the University of Toronto who collects data on how Ontarians speak. Using our idiosyncratic words not only keeps them alive, she says, it helps them get recognized as Canadian in the Oxford English Dictionary, the gold standard for preserving a word for posterity.

Tagliamonte is one of a select group of linguists consulted by the OED to determine Canadian words. Do you sit in a “Muskoka chair” or fill up at a “gas bar”? You can thank Tagliamonte, and her Ontario Dialects research, for those words making the cut.

But what we think are Canadian words, and how they became labelled as such, is often anything but straightforward.

Take “gotch,” a Canadian word added to the OED in 2020. It describes a pair of underwear but comes from the Ukrainian word for trousers, gotchi. Ukrainian-Canadians make up nearly 4 per cent of the country’s population – and it’s this significant level of immigration that propelled this new term into the language, explained Danica Salazar, executive editor of World Englishes for Oxford Languages.

Other influences from non-English languages come from our own backyard. For example, “dep,” from depanneur, only made the OED cut into Canadian English this year. That’s surprising for a word that, although used mainly in Quebec, has been widely understood across the country for a long time.

While some Canadian linguists lament the lack of Canadian words included in the OED – there are currently 553 entries, but that doesn’t include words shared with the U.S. – Salazar explained that it’s nothing against Canada.

“A lot of the decision on whether to include a word is based on frequency and availability of evidence. People will say, ‘Oh, the word is written in the OED. We can use it now, it’s a real word. But they have things backward, because it’s usage that determines inclusion,” she said.

Behind the scenes of Canadian English’s growth has been a battle of dictionaries, explained Stefan Dollinger, another Canadian language warrior and the chief editor of the Dictionary of Canadianism on Historical Principles.

In the 1950s and 60s, the British and American dictionaries used in Canada were slowly replaced by a Canadian one: The Gage Canadian Dictionary, published by W. J. Gage and Co. in Toronto (later acquired by Nelson.) By 1983, it dominated the dictionary market, marking an important development in the history of Canada’s identity and psyche. If you were a student in those days, you likely owned a copy – or at least, your teacher did.

But in the 1990s, the Oxford English Dictionary developed The Canadian Oxford Dictionary, effectively killing the Gage brand. Then, in 2008, OED killed their own Canadian bestseller because it wasn’t making enough money. Dollinger said at the time OED promised to include Canadian updates to the U.K. edition, but he was skeptical that would happen. “And of course it hasn’t happened,” he said.

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No matter where they’re codified, Canadian words continue to be born – but since language is a complex mix of history, social influences, culture and even commerce, it’s sometimes hard to extract all the Americana out of them.

Remember duotangs, the colourful folders with brass fasteners used to spruce up a school project? The experts deem it a uniquely Canadian word but it derives from the now defunct Duo-Tang Company, which was based in the U.S.

“Gong show,” meaning a chaotic event, is another Canadian term, but derived from the one-time U.S. television program. Used in a sentence, you could say Trump’s foreign policy moves have been a gong show.

Language crosses borders in other ways too, said Allison Burkette, a professor of linguistics of the University of Kentucky and the editor of the Linguistic Atlas Project. If someone in Windsor who works in the auto trade talks to someone in Detroit, also in the auto trade, they are going to speak similarly. That is, if they see eye-to-eye.

“If people get along and they feel like they are on the same side, they are going to sound more alike. But the second you introduce a contentious topic, or something where they won’t agree, people naturally move their speech away. In linguistic theory, it’s called accommodation theory,” explained Burkette.

So maybe, if the relationship between Canada and the United States improves, you will not need to order another Canadiano. Even if it doesn’t, you might just stick with a double-double, and if you are feeling extra sentimental, add a shot of maple syrup.

Leah Eichler, a self-proclaimed word nerd, writes regularly about our evolving use of language