Book excerpt: What do English-speaking Canadians sound like and why? Can you tell the difference between a Canadian and an American? A Canadian and an Englishman? If so, how? Linguistically speaking is Canada a colony of Britain or a satellite of the United States? Is there a Canadian language? Speaking Canadian English, first published in 1971, in a non-technical way, describes English as it is spoken in Canada – its vocabulary, pronunciation, syntax, grammar, spelling, slang. This title comments on the history of Canadian English – how it came to sound the way it does – and attempts to predict what will happen to it in the future. This book will be of interest to students of linguistics.