Mark Carney Criticised For Using British Spellings In Canadian Documents

An anonymous reader quotes a report from the Guardian: Mark Carney says that amid a fundamental shift to the nature of globalization, his government will catalyze the growth in both the public and private sector. But Canadian linguists say that's a problem. Language experts have called out the Canadian prime minister's growing 'utilization' of British spellings in key documents -- including the recent federal budget and a press release issued following a meeting with Donald Trump.

Carney, who served as the governor of the bank of England for seven years, appears to have run afoul of Canadian linguistic norms, returning to his home country with a penchant for using 's' instead of 'z'- a hallmark of British spellings. In an open letter (PDF) chastising the prime minister, six linguists have asked his office, the Canadian government and parliament to stick to Canadian English spelling, 'which is the spelling they consistently used from the 1970s to 2025.' They warned that if governments start to use other systems for spelling, 'this could lead to confusion about which spelling is Canadian.'

Canadian English is a source of immense pride for the nation's pedants. But the country's distinct and somewhat arbitrary spelling reflects the legacy of how Canada was colonized. 'Canadian English evolved through Loyalist settlement after the American Revolutionary War, subsequent waves of English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish immigration, and from European and global contexts,' the letter says, with the current accepted spellings of words reflecting 'global influences and cultures from around the world represented in our population, as well as containing words and phrases from Indigenous languages.' The linguists pointed out that Canada's distinct style of spelling was widespread in media and government documents, with this deliberate decision reflecting a desire to preserve a vital element of the country's 'national history, identity and pride.'

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