Language Contacts in Canada and Their Linguistic Consequences

Abstract

The article examines one of the examples of how the English language influences French in the Canadian province of New Brunswick, where due to intensive language contacts with the local French language there has appeared a special code named chiac. This linguistic structure becomes a distinctive marker of francophones at the south-east of the province, a kind of symbol of their resistance to both the English language and standard French. By the example of chiac the author examines the convergence of Canada’s two major languages through the lenses of the south-eastern residence area of New Brunswick francophones. The analysis of linguistic material has allowed the author to conclude about the considerable level of Anglicisation of the French language, in particular, at the lexical level, and to identify three ways to assimilate borrowings by the recipient language: adaptation, non-assimilation and semantic assimilation.