Canadian English
Canadian English encompasses the dialects of English spoken in Canada as the first language of approximately 20 million people, representing the mother tongue of over half the population.[1] It developed primarily from the late 18th-century speech of Loyalist settlers from the northern United States, forming a variety of North American English that incorporated subsequent influences from British immigrants and later waves of European settlement.[2][3] While its pronunciation generally mirrors that of General American English—including the cot–caught merger—Canadian English is defined phonologically by Canadian raising, an allophonic rule elevating the starting point of diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ before voiceless consonants, affecting words like "bite" and "bout."[4][5] Orthographically, it favors British-derived forms such as -our in "colour" and -re in "centre," but aligns with American usage in preferring -ize over -ise and double -l- in inflections like "travelling."[6] The vocabulary features distinct lexical items tied to Canadian geography and culture, including "toque" for a woolen hat, "chesterfield" for a couch, and "washroom" for a public toilet, alongside loanwords from Indigenous languages such as "moose" and "pemmican."[7] Regional dialects vary, with Standard Canadian English dominant in central and western provinces, while Atlantic Canadian English retains stronger Scottish and Irish substrate effects, and urban centers like Toronto show emerging multicultural influences on slang.[8]History
Origins in Colonial Settlement
English presence in what is now Canada began with exploratory voyages, notably John Cabot's 1497 expedition under commission from King Henry VII, which reached the coast of Newfoundland and claimed it for England, marking the earliest documented European contact by English speakers in the region.[9] Seasonal fishing activities by English, Portuguese, and Basque fishermen followed on the Grand Banks, establishing temporary camps but not permanent settlements until the early 17th century, with limited written records of language use due to the predominance of oral and practical exchanges among transient populations.[10] In Acadia (present-day Nova Scotia and parts of New Brunswick), English claims dated to the 1610s through grants like the Council for New England's patent, but French Acadian communities dominated, and English settlement remained sparse until the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713 ceded mainland Acadia to Britain, introducing administrative English while French persisted among locals.[11] The British conquest of New France in 1763 via the Treaty of Paris transferred Quebec and surrounding territories to British control, establishing English as the official language for governance and law, though the French-speaking population vastly outnumbered English speakers at the time.[12] The Quebec Act of 1774 accommodated French civil law and Catholic rights, limiting English linguistic dominance in the core colony and preserving French as the primary vernacular, with English usage confined largely to British officials, merchants, and military personnel.[13] A pivotal influx occurred with the arrival of United Empire Loyalists fleeing the American Revolution between 1775 and 1783, totaling approximately 35,000 to 50,000 refugees who resettled in British North America, primarily in Nova Scotia (including the newly separated New Brunswick in 1784) and the future Upper Canada.[14][15] These migrants, drawn from diverse American colonial backgrounds, introduced late-18th-century English varieties from the Thirteen Colonies, forming the foundational stock of Canada's English-speaking population and influencing early lexical and syntactic norms through their majority contribution to non-Indigenous, non-French settlers.[16] Parallel migrations of Scottish and Irish settlers reinforced English in the Maritime provinces during the late 18th and early 19th centuries, with Highland Scots arriving in significant numbers to Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and Cape Breton from the 1770s onward, often via organized land grants and amid clearances in Scotland.[17] Irish immigrants, including Protestants and Catholics, established communities in Newfoundland, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick from the mid-18th century, contributing to dialectal diversity in fishing and agrarian areas, as evidenced by early colonial records and muster rolls rather than comprehensive censuses, which began inconsistently post-1760s.[18] These Celtic-influenced groups intermingled with Loyalists, embedding regional phonetic and lexical traits tied to their origins, though documentation remains fragmentary due to reliance on parish and land grant archives.[19]Development Through Confederation and Expansion
Following the Confederation of Canada in 1867, which united Ontario, Quebec, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick under the British North America Act, English solidified as the primary language of administration and settlement in the expanding Dominion, with section 133 mandating bilingualism only in federal Parliament, courts, and certain legislative contexts. Westward expansion accelerated after the purchase of Rupert's Land in 1870, incorporating vast territories into Canada and prompting organized settlement to counter American influences.[20] The completion of the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1885 was pivotal, enabling rapid migration and settlement of the Prairies by English-speaking immigrants, predominantly from Ontario, whose speech varieties—characterized by features akin to American Midland English—spread westward to Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and beyond.[21] [22] Between 1896 and 1914, over 2.8 million immigrants arrived in Canada, with many settling in the West via railway-facilitated routes, reinforcing Ontario-influenced English norms over diverse incoming dialects from Britain, the US, and Europe.[22] This homogenization laid the foundation for a relatively uniform "standard" Canadian English across central and western provinces, distinct from Atlantic varieties.[23] Nineteenth-century wordlists and glossaries began documenting an emerging Canadian lexicon, capturing terms from frontier settlement, agriculture, and resource extraction, such as regionalisms for logging and farming practices that reflected the blending of British, American, and local usages.[24] Bilingual tensions arose, notably in the Manitoba Schools Crisis of 1890, where English-only education policies curtailed French-language rights, underscoring anglophone dominance in prairie provinces and limiting French phonological or grammatical influence on the English core until later twentieth-century developments. Despite Quebec's French-speaking population, post-Confederation French contributions to English remained lexical borrowings in specific domains like cuisine and governance, without significantly altering pronunciation or syntax in English-dominant regions.[25]20th-Century Shifts and American Proximity
In the post-World War II era, Canadian English underwent phonological shifts toward greater alignment with General American English, accelerated by the widespread importation of U.S. cultural products such as films, music, and television programming. This exposure, facilitated by geographical proximity and limited regulatory barriers on American broadcasts, introduced American phonological norms into Canadian speech patterns, particularly in urban areas near the border. Dialectological analyses have documented this convergence in variables like the realization of certain vowels, where Canadian patterns have shown gradual approximation to American ones despite retaining distinct features.[26][27][28] The 1972 Survey of Canadian English, led by M.H. Scargill and H.J. Warkentyne, offered the first nationwide empirical assessment through questionnaires on pronunciation, grammar, and usage across age groups and regions. It revealed extensive similarities between Canadian and American English in core phonological elements, such as consonant clusters and rhythm, while noting generational stability in many features and a departure from stricter British influences. This data underscored that Canadian English formed a cohesive North American variety, with over 90% of respondents exhibiting pronunciations akin to those in the U.S., challenging notions of preserved British purity in favor of proximity-driven realism.[29][30] From the 1960s to the 1980s, Canada's urbanization—marked by population shifts to cities like Toronto and Vancouver, where urban dwellers rose from about 70% to over 75% of the total—promoted dialect leveling and homogenization of phonological traits. This process diffused pan-Canadian features, including Canadian Raising (the diphthong shift in words like "about" and "price"), across middle-class urban speech, reducing rural-urban divides and reinforcing alignment with adjacent American dialects through shared media and mobility. Sociolinguistic studies attribute this uniformity to standardization motives, where urban homogeneity supplanted regional diversity, yielding a dialect resilient yet convergent with U.S. norms.[31][32][33]External Influences
British and Loyalist Foundations
The arrival of United Empire Loyalists following the American Revolutionary War (1775–1783) established key foundations for English in British North America, particularly in regions like Ontario, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia. Approximately 40,000 to 50,000 Loyalists, primarily from the Thirteen Colonies, migrated northward between 1783 and 1791, seeking to maintain allegiance to the British Crown and receiving land grants in return.[34][8] Their speech patterns reflected mid- to late-18th-century colonial English, which retained stronger ties to contemporary British varieties than the emerging post-independence American forms, as colonial dialects had not yet fully diverged from metropolitan norms.[35] This migration introduced a conservative linguistic base, prioritizing continuity with British imperial standards over revolutionary innovations south of the border. Pronunciation features among Loyalist descendants preserved certain British-aligned traits, notably the articulation of the letter Z as "zed" rather than the American "zee," a holdover from pre-19th-century English naming conventions that emphasized the Greek zeta.[36][37] This preference persisted in formal and educational contexts, reflecting institutional emphasis on British propriety, as evidenced in Canadian broadcasting and schooling where "zed" remains standard.[38] Such conservative phonetics underscore how Loyalist communities resisted phonetic shifts occurring in the United States, maintaining echoes of earlier transatlantic speech norms. Canadian orthography inherited British conventions through Loyalist settlement and subsequent imperial administration, favoring endings like -our (e.g., colour, honour) and -re (e.g., centre, theatre) in official and printed materials.[39] These preferences, codified in dictionaries and style guides, stem from the Loyalists' exposure to British-influenced colonial printing and governance documents, contrasting with American simplifications.[40] In legal and institutional domains, British terminology endured via the reception of English common law, imported through Loyalist administrators and colonial charters, with terms like "the Crown" denoting prosecutorial authority (e.g., Crown attorney) and structures such as "Attorney General" mirroring Westminster models.[41][42] Historical usage of "gaol" for prison facilities, as in early Upper Canadian statutes, exemplifies this retention before partial Americanization, preserving a framework where British legal lexicon reinforced imperial fidelity.[43]American Phonological and Lexical Convergence
Canadian English shares key phonological features with General American English, including rhoticity—the pronunciation of /r/ in post-vocalic positions such as "car" (/kɑɹ/)—which distinguishes both varieties from non-rhotic Received Pronunciation in England.[44] This rhotic character traces to the 18th-century influx of United Empire Loyalists from the American colonies, who carried rhotic speech patterns northward after the Revolutionary War, comprising up to 10% of Upper Canada's early population by 1791.[23] Acoustic studies confirm near-uniform rhoticity across Canadian dialects, with realization rates exceeding 95% in urban samples from Toronto to Vancouver, mirroring American norms and diverging from British precedents.[45] Both varieties also lack the trap-bath split characteristic of southern British English, where words like "bath" shift to /bɑːθ/ while "trap" remains /træp/; in Canadian and American English, these merge under the TRAP vowel /æ/, as in "bath" (/bæθ/).[28] This uniformity stems from shared colonial-era substrates, with Loyalist settlers reinforcing pre-split patterns from 17th- and 18th-century American English.[46] Empirical data from vowel formant analyses show Canadian /æ/ realizations overlapping closely with Midwestern American variants, with F1 and F2 values differing by less than 10% in comparable lexical sets.[47] Lexically, Canadian English exhibits over 90% overlap with American English in core vocabulary, driven by geographic proximity, cross-border trade exceeding $600 billion annually as of 2023, and dominant U.S. media consumption, where Canadians access American broadcasts without restriction.[8] This convergence manifests in shared terms for everyday objects and concepts, such as "truck" over British "lorry," with divergence limited to administrative or regional items like "washroom" versus American "restroom." Surveys of 1,000+ Canadian speakers indicate 85-95% adoption of U.S.-derived neologisms in technology and commerce, such as "cell phone" rather than "mobile."[48] Charles Boberg's 2008 acoustic study of 50 Canadian cities quantified U.S. phonological influence, revealing that urban centers like Toronto and Vancouver align more closely with adjacent American dialects than with rural Canadian ones, with vowel shifts (e.g., low-back merger of /ɑ/ and /ɒ/) occurring in 70% of samples, akin to Inland North American patterns.[49] This data counters claims of robust Canadian distinctiveness, as inter-dialect variation within Canada (e.g., 15-20 Hz formant differences) is comparable to U.S. regional spreads, underscoring assimilation via cultural osmosis rather than isolation.[46] Ongoing convergence is evident in foreign (a) realizations, where younger Canadians (born post-1990) increasingly favor American /ɑ/ over traditional Canadian /æ/ in words like "pasta," at rates up to 60% in Montreal samples.[28]French and Indigenous Lexical Borrowings
Canadian English includes lexical borrowings from French, largely originating from prolonged contact in Quebec and Acadia since the 17th century, with terms often relating to cuisine, clothing, and outdoor activities. Notable examples encompass poutine, denoting a Quebec-originated dish of french fries smothered in cheese curds and gravy, which gained national prominence through media exposure starting in the 1970s despite its regional roots.[50] Similarly, tuque (a knitted winter cap) and toque (a variant referring to the same item) derive directly from French toque, with usage concentrated in Quebec but disseminated across Canada via cultural exports like winter sports terminology.[51] Other terms, such as portage (the act of carrying a canoe over land, from French portage), reflect fur trade-era adaptations now standard in wilderness contexts nationwide.[51] These borrowings exhibit semantic shifts in English usage, as analyzed in linguistic studies tracing their integration from colonial periods onward.[52] Indigenous language contributions to Canadian English vocabulary are modest in scale, comprising fewer than 100 core terms primarily from Algonquian languages like Mi'kmaq, Cree, and Ojibwe, often denoting native fauna, flora, and artifacts adapted during early European exploration and settlement. Examples include caribou (from Mi'kmaq xalibu, referring to the woodland caribou), moose (from Eastern Abenaki moz, denoting the large deer species), and toboggan (from Mi'kmaq topaghan, a wooden sled).[53] Additional borrowings such as chipmunk (from Ojibwe ajidamoonh), muskeg (from Cree maskek, swampy terrain), and saskatoon (from Cree misâskwatomin, a berry shrub) highlight environmental specificity, with many entering English via intermediaries like French traders before achieving broader Canadian adoption.[54] These terms remain peripheral to everyday lexicon, lacking evidence of widespread syntactic calques or phonological restructuring in standard Canadian English varieties.[55] The 1969 Official Languages Act, which enshrined bilingualism in federal institutions, has not measurably expanded French lexical influence on English beyond pre-existing patterns, as post-enactment studies show stable borrowing rates tied to historical rather than policy-driven contact.[56] Indigenous borrowings similarly predate modern policies, persisting in niche domains like regional place names and outdoor terminology without proportional growth in core vocabulary.[54]Modern Immigration and Multilingual Pressures
Since the turn of the 21st century, Canada's immigration policy has prioritized economic migrants from Asia, leading to a marked increase in arrivals from South Asia (notably India) and China, which together accounted for a growing share of permanent residents, surpassing traditional European sources by the mid-2000s.[57] The South Asian-origin population, for instance, nearly quadrupled between 1996 and 2021, reflecting this shift toward non-European demographics.[58] This influx has heightened multilingual pressures, with the 2021 Census documenting over 200 mother tongues spoken in Canada and nearly 10.7 million individuals (about 29% of the population) able to converse in a non-official language.[59] [60] Yet, official language dominance persists, as 98% of Canadians reported knowledge of English or French, and approximately 94% of the immigrant stock speaks at least one official language.[60] [57] These demographic changes introduce substrate influences from immigrant L1s, such as retroflex consonant articulations common in South Asian languages, which may appear in enclave speech among Punjabi or Hindi speakers in urban centers like Vancouver or Toronto.[61] Similarly, Mandarin-influenced prosody or tonal residues can persist in Chinese immigrant English, with studies showing limited progress in native-like accent acquisition even after years of exposure.[62] However, such features remain confined to heritage communities and exhibit minimal diffusion into broader Canadian English, as intergenerational language shift toward English assimilation predominates, diluting rather than substantially altering the native substrate. Claims of lexical or phonological "enrichment" from these sources often overstate integration, ignoring empirical patterns where L1 interference fades without reshaping core norms. Linguistic surveys underscore the resilience of Canadian English's foundational traits against these pressures. Charles Boberg's analysis, drawing from phonetic and attitudinal data, portrays the variety as maintaining distinct phonological stability, including vowel shifts like the Canadian Raising, even as urbanization concentrates multilingual populations.[63] The McGill New Survey of Canadian English (updated through 2024) reveals persistent adherence to select core markers—such as certain spelling preferences—across generations, with regional phonological patterns holding firm despite demographic diversification.[64] This resistance aligns with causal dynamics of dialect maintenance, where high English proficiency mandates for immigrants (e.g., via Express Entry's language thresholds) and societal incentives favor acquisition of ambient norms over substrate export, preventing wholesale dilution of the established variety.[65]Phonology and Phonetics
Core Features of Standard Canadian English
Standard Canadian English refers to the supralocal variety spoken primarily by educated, urban middle-class populations across much of Canada, excluding distinct regional dialects such as those in Newfoundland or the Ottawa Valley. This baseline form aligns closely with General American English in many segmental features but retains unique phonological markers that set it apart from both British Received Pronunciation and southern U.S. varieties. Acoustic analyses, including formant measurements from spectrograms, confirm its homogeneity among younger urban speakers in cities like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal, where it serves as the prestige norm in media and education.[45] A defining feature is Canadian Raising, an allophonic rule affecting the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/, where the nucleus raises before voiceless consonants—realized as [ʌɪ] in "price" or [ʌʊ] in "about," contrasting with [aɪ] and [aʊ] before voiced ones like in "pride" or "loud." Spectrographic evidence from formant transitions, particularly elevated F2 onsets in raised variants, demonstrates this pattern's consistency, with acoustic studies in urban settings showing implementation rates approaching universality among middle-class speakers.[66][67] This raising, absent in standard British English, underscores Canadian English's divergence despite shared lexical roots. Intervocalic flapping of /t/ and /d/ to [ɾ] mirrors General American patterns, as in "better" or "ladder" pronounced [ˈbɛɾɚ] and [ˈlæɾɚ], reducing the phonemic contrast in unstressed syllables. Dialect surveys and phonetic transcriptions confirm this lenition's prevalence in Standard Canadian English, distinguishing it from British norms where /t/ remains a clear stop.[68] Additionally, the Low Back Merger unifies the /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ phonemes, rendering "cot" and "caught" homophonous as [kɑt], with merger rates exceeding 90% in Canadian urban populations per comprehensive North American dialect atlases.[69][70] These traits, verified through quantitative acoustic data, form the phonological core of the variety without implying uniformity in prosody or lexical choices.Vowel Shifts and Consonants
Canadian English features Canadian Raising, a phonological process where the diphthongs /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ are realized with a raised nucleus ([ʌɪ] and [ʌʊ]) before voiceless consonants, as in "price" [prʌɪs] and "out" [ʌʊt], distinguishing it from General American English where raising is less consistent or absent in many dialects.[67] This phenomenon, first documented in Ontario in the 1970s, prevails across most Canadian regions except parts of Newfoundland and Labrador, with acoustic studies confirming higher F2 and F3 formants in raised variants among speakers from Vancouver to Halifax.[71] The Canadian Vowel Shift, identified in 1995, involves the lowering and retraction of lax front vowels: /æ/ (TRAP) lowers and centralizes, /ɛ/ (DRESS) further lowers toward , and /ɪ/ (KIT) retracts toward [ʊ], observed in urban centers like Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal through apparent-time data from speakers born between 1940 and 1990.[72] This chain shift follows the earlier fixation of raised diphthongs via Canadian Raising, creating phonetic space, and contrasts with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift in adjacent U.S. Inland North dialects, which raises /æ/ instead; empirical formant analyses show minimal NCVS incursion in Ontario, absent further west in prairie provinces and British Columbia.[71] Consonant realizations include alveolar flapping of intervocalic /t/ and /d/ to [ɾ], as in "butter" [ˈbʌɾɚ], widespread among younger urban speakers but less prevalent in Maritime provinces where full stops persist more often.[73] Glottal stops [ʔ] substitute for /t/ in coda positions like "button" [ˈbʌʔn], increasing among adolescents in Toronto and Vancouver per sociolinguistic interviews, though varying by formality and region, with older speakers favoring releases.[74] Retention of the /hw/-/w/ distinction, pronouncing "which" [ʍɪtʃ] versus "witch" [wɪtʃ], occurs among 15-20% of surveyed speakers in Ontario and Atlantic Canada, primarily older or rural individuals, but surveys from 2000-2010 indicate decline to near-merger in urban youth cohorts.[74]Prosody and Intonation Patterns
Canadian English prosody is characterized by a stress-timed rhythm, where stressed syllables occur at relatively regular intervals regardless of the number of intervening unstressed syllables, aligning closely with patterns observed in General American English rather than syllable-timed languages like French.[75] This rhythm contributes to a perceptual fluency that facilitates comprehension in rapid speech, as documented in acoustic analyses of North American English varieties.[76] Intonation in Canadian English often features high rising terminals (HRTs), where declarative statements end with a rising pitch contour similar to that of yes-no questions, serving pragmatic functions such as seeking listener engagement or confirmation without altering the sentence's assertive intent.[77] This pattern, sometimes referred to in perceptual studies as contributing to a "question-like" quality in statements, is more prevalent among younger urban speakers and has been linked to discourse strategies for maintaining conversational flow.[78] Acoustic data from focus-marking tasks indicate that pitch excursions in Canadian English are modulated for information structure, with narrower focus eliciting higher pitch accents compared to broad focus, though overall contours remain less exaggerated than in some British varieties.[79] The discourse particle "eh," functioning as a confirmational tag appended to statements, typically carries a falling or level intonation that reinforces agreement-seeking without inverting the utterance's polarity, distinguishing it from interrogative tags in other Englishes.[80] Perceptual analyses highlight its role in prosodic phrasing, where it integrates into the intonational unit to signal shared knowledge or elicit validation, though its frequency varies by context and is not a defining feature of all Canadian speakers.[78] Empirical studies of spontaneous speech corpora confirm that "eh" co-occurs with HRTs to convey similar interpersonal meanings, such as softening assertions, underscoring the interplay between lexical tags and suprasegmental cues in Canadian English pragmatics.[77]Orthography and Spelling
Hybrid Conventions
Canadian English employs a hybrid orthographic system that selectively incorporates British and American spelling conventions, resulting in forms distinct from both parent varieties. Suffixes like -our are retained from British English in words such as colour, honour, and favour, while -re endings appear in centre and theatre.[81] In contrast, the -ize suffix prevails over British -ise, as in realize, organize, and standardize, following the preference established in major Canadian dictionaries like the Canadian Oxford Dictionary.[81] This pattern extends to measurement terms, where American-influenced -er is used in meter (for length or electricity) rather than British metre.[81] Notable exceptions highlight further American alignment in specific lexical items. The spelling tire is standard for the rubber wheel covering, diverging from British tyre and aligning with norms in the Gage Canadian Dictionary and widespread Canadian usage, including in commercial contexts like the retailer Canadian Tire.[81][82] Similarly, curb (as in roadside edge) is favoured over kerb. These choices reflect practical adaptations in Canadian publishing and lexicography, where hybrid forms reduce divergence from American markets while preserving select British markers.[81] Style guides such as the Canadian Press Caps and Spelling reinforce this hybridity in professional writing, listing preferred forms like colour alongside realize and tire.[83] Corpus analyses of formal Canadian texts, including those drawn from sources like the Strathy Corpus of Canadian English, demonstrate predominant adherence to these conventions, with hybrid spellings appearing consistently in edited prose and official documents.[84] This empirical regularity underscores the system's entrenchment, though minor variations persist in regional or informal contexts.[85]Key Differences from British and American English
Canadian orthography incorporates a hybrid system that predominantly follows British conventions for certain suffixes while adopting American preferences in others, as outlined in official Canadian style guides. For words ending in -our, such as colour and honour, the British form with "u" is standard, diverging from the American omission of the letter. Similarly, endings in -re, as in centre and theatre, align with British practice rather than the American -er.[81][86] In contrast, Canadian English favors the American -ize suffix over the British -ise, as seen in realize and organize, a convention endorsed by major Canadian dictionaries like the Canadian Oxford Dictionary. Greek- and Latin-derived terms often follow American simplifications, spelling anesthesia, encyclopedia, and diarrhea without the diphthong ae, unlike British anaesthesia. For the chemical element, aluminum (without the extra "i") prevails over British aluminium, reflecting alignment with American scientific nomenclature.[81][86] Retention of British forms persists in financial terminology, where cheque is used for banking instruments instead of American check, a practice standardized in Canadian legal and institutional documents. Historically, gaol was employed for prisons in line with British usage, contrasting American jail, though jail has become more common in modern Canadian contexts. Doubled consonants in inflected forms, such as travelled and fulfilment, adhere to British patterns rather than American single-l spellings like traveled.[6][86] These divergences result in empirical inconsistencies across domains, with no uniform rule dictating all preferences; for instance, while tire (for vehicle wheel) follows American spelling over British tyre, mould retains the British "ou." Such hybridity is documented in surveys of Canadian usage, where preferences vary slightly by region but generally prioritize clarity in official communications over strict adherence to either parent variant.[6][87]| Orthographic Feature | British Example | American Example | Canadian Preference |
|---|---|---|---|
| -our ending | colour | color | colour |
| -re ending | centre | center | centre |
| Verb suffix | organise | organize | organize |
| Diphthong omission | anaemia | anemia | anemia |
| Element name | aluminium | aluminum | aluminum |
| Financial term | cheque | check | cheque |