TEC Blog

Canadian and American Spelling: Your Guide from Q to Z

by Barbara Kamienski

Published at 2016-05-18

Stop right there. Did you read "queue to zee"? If you did, you're using American pronunciation. Up here in the land of butter tarts and Nanaimo bars, we say "queue to zed"—which is why we can't ever get the Alphabet Song to rhyme. But we love our alphabet with its odd ending nonetheless. One of our most popular alphabet books is Eh? To Zed: A Canadian ABeCedarium by Kevin Major, and the "Z" in the title of another one, Z Is for Zamboni: A Hockey Alphabet by Matt Napier, is definitely pronounced "zed."

Problems arise when we Canadians want to talk about catching some Zs (catching some Zeds? really?), but on the whole we take a kind of self-deprecating Canadian pride in our distinctive alphabet and, um, idiosyncratic spelling. The government's Language Portal of Canada website features some amusing quizzes, many of them relating to Canadian spelling (www.noslangues-ourlanguages.gc.ca/quiz/index-eng.html) — which you're sure to ace once you've studied the lists in this series of blogs closely.

For the A to G Canadian/American spelling guide, click here

For the H to P Canadian/American spelling guide, click here

A(nother) Word about Canadian Identity

It's a national obsession: Who are we? Donald Sutherland has the final word on that. Here’s what he recently said in Cannes:

I kind of gave up talking about Canadian cinema a long time ago. There's a famous story of a British soldier and a French soldier and a Canadian soldier who were captured in the process of the war and sent to be shot by firing squad, but they were each given an opportunity to have a last wish. The Brit asked for a cup of tea, the Canadian asked for fifteen minutes to talk about Canadian identity, and the Frenchman asked to be shot before the Canadian.

CANADIAN	AMERICAN
racquet (tennis)	racket (tennis)
rancour	rancor
rancorous	rancorous
referendums	referenda
rigour	rigor
rigorous	rigorous
rumour	rumor
saleable	salable
saviour	savior
savour	savor
savory (herb)	savory (herb)
savoury	savory
sceptre	scepter
signalled	signaled
sizable	sizable
skepticism	skepticism
smoulder	smolder
sombre	somber
spectre	specter
splendour	splendor
squalor	squalor
storey (building)	story (building)
succour	succor
sulphur	sulfur
theatre	theater
tranquilize	tranquilize
traveller	traveler
tumour	tumor
valour	valor
valorous	valorous
vapour	vapor
vigour	vigor
vigorous	vigorous
woolen	woollen
woolly	woolly
worshipper	worshiper

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