Discussions of the need for a Dictionary of Canadian English, during the past several years, have made it rather painfully obvious that most Canadians, lacking ready access to the Oxford English Dictionary and the Dictionary of American English, are unable to grasp the idea behind a dictionary based on historical principles. Others, while familiar with such works, have had little conception of the wealth of materials awaiting lexical exploitation in the field of Canadiana. It is understandable that Canadian scholars, inexperienced in the art of lexicography, should ifeel uncertain how to proceed about cultivation of ground that has for so long lain fallow. So that a beginning may be made, this selection of materials is offered as a suggestion of the lines that an historical Dictionary of Canadian English might follow.

James O. St. Clair-Sobell has touched on many interesting points in his “Notes on Spelling Pronunciation with Special Reference to Modern Standard Russian”, Canadian Slavonic Papers I (1956) : 66-75. The purpose of the present brief note is simply to rectify, as I think, what must be an analytical oversight in his discussion (70-71) of intervocalic / j /.

St. Clair-Sobell cites the statements of Isačenko and Shaxmatov to the effect that intervocalic / j / ‘lapses’ in certain environments. He continues : ‘But the “presence” of the intervocalic j is indicated by the quality of the preceding vowel and also by the quality of the following unstressed vowel.’ He then goes on to say (71) that many phoneticians and orthoëpists seem to have missed this dropping of the / j / , and that ‘in affected, that is, in spelling pronunciation the j is heard or it is imagined that the j is heard.’

It is customary to represent the German vowel system as consisting of seven short vowels / i / , / e / , / a / , / o / , /u/, / ö / , /ü/ and seven long vowels / i : / , / e : / , / a : / , / o : / , / u :/, / ö : / , / ü : /. In this analysis the short vowels have the phonetic value [I, ε, α, ɔ, U, œ, Y], whereas the long vowels are described as consisting of short vowel plus the phoneme / : /.

[: ] obviously does not only mean length, but it includes several features of quality, i.e. tenseness, fronting, and raising. It will be noted that the contrast tense-lax applies to every single pair: [i — I ] , [e — ε], [a — α], [o — ɔ], [u — U] [ö — œ], [ ü — Y].