Canadian English
    English is the second most widely spoken language in the world. It is the official language of The United Kingdom, Ireland, The United States, Canada, Jamaica, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand and it is widely spoken in India. It is the language of international business and science, of aviation and shipping. As so many people speak English in so many countries, there are many different "Englishes". The best form of English is called Standard English and is the language of educated English speakers. The government, The BBC, The Universities, uses it and it is often called Queen's English. American English is the variety of the English spoken in the United States. It is different from English in pronunciation, intonation, spelling, vocabulary and sometimes - even grammar! An Englishman goes to the town center to see a film while an American goes downtown to see a movie. If an Englishman needs a pen he would ask you: "Have you got a pen, please?" but the American would say:" Do you have a pen?" Australian and New Zealand English, also called Australian English, are very similar. Especially in pronunciation they are also similar to British English, but there are differences in vocabulary and slang. Many terms, such as kangaroo, dingo, wombat and boomerang, come from the Aboriginal language and many others from the Cockney dialect spoken by the first settlers, The Londoners. Canadian English is different both from American and from British English.
    Herbert Agar wrote in his article in 1931:
    "The English should try to cope with their philological ignorance. They should train themselves to realize that it is neither absurd nor vulgar that a language, which was once, the same should in course of centuries develop differently in different parts of the world. Just as French and Italian may be described as divergent forms of modern Latin, so it would be helpful to think of the language of Oxford and the language of Harvard as divergent forms of modern English. It is perhaps a pity, from the point of view of international good feelings, that the two forms have not diverged a little further. At any rate, when an Englishman can learn to think of American as a language, and not merely as a ludicrously unsuccessful attempt to speak as he himself speaks, when he can learn to have for American only the normal intolerance of the provincial mind for all foreign tongues, then there will come a great improvement in Anglo-American relations. For even though Americans realize absurdity of the English attitude toward their language, nevertheless they remain deeply annoyed by it. This is natural, for a man's language is his very soul, it is his thoughts and almost all his consciousness. Laugh at a man's language and you have laughed at the man himself in the most inclusive sense..." This statement may refer to any of "Englishes" mentioned above.
    Another American linguist - John Algeo states in his essay "A Meditation on the Varieties of English", that "all linguistic varieties are fictions. A language system, such as English, is a great abstraction, a fiction, analyzable into large areal varieties - American, Australian, British, Canadian, Northern Irish, Scots, Welsh, and so on. But each of those is in turn an abstraction, a fiction". The point, Algeo argues, is that even though these terms - American, Australian, Canadian English - describe the reality that is in fact not there, they are nonetheless useful fictions.
    "Useful" is the key term in Algeo's argument, but unfortunately he fails to adequately define in what way these fictions are useful. The only definition of usefulness he offers is this: "without such fictions there can be no linguistics, nor any science. To describe, to explain, and to predict requires that we suppose there are stable things behind our discourse". This explanation hardly seems to clarify the situation. The claim that the fictions of national Englishes are useful because they are the foundation for linguistics is a tautology that serves more to undermine linguistics than to justify those fictions. Further, Algeo's point that all science is based on certain necessary fictions is perhaps true, though usually science attempt to resolve known fictions into more stable, at least less fictional truths. Finally, the role of predicting language change hardly seems an essential component of linguistics.
    Algeo returns to the term "useful" in his conclusion. He suggests that the common practice of equating "English" with UK English, and the English of England in particular, is one of these useful fictions. How or in what way he never makes clear.
    The suggestion that national boundaries are convenient regional groupings for studying a linguistic community is valid, and perhaps there is some "usefulness" in studying that linguistic community as such provided there is indeed a unique or binding set of linguistic features shared by that group. But by emphasizing Algeo's remark that "all linguistic varieties are fictions", we may argue that in certain circumstances, "Canadian English" being one, the "usefulness" of the fiction is so limited, that not only is it almost purposeless but it can and does result in negative social and political effects. Unique nation, unique language?
    The fundamental political problem is that a language, or a variety of a language, is too often equated with a nation. Leandre Bergeron emphasizes this in his Charte de la Langue Quebecoise by selecting as an epigraph this sentence by Michelet: "La langue es le signe principal d'une nationalite" [Tr.: "Language is a principle symbol of nationality"]. The association between a unique language group and a unique political nation is not necessarily incorrect or worthless. Our oldest political boundaries are clearly a representation of the fact that a common language at one time was one of the crucial determining factors in how a group of people delimited their community. ............