Visitors from Canada

We have a lot of visitors from our partner schools recently. A couple of weeks ago, one came from US, and today we had one from Canada (We will have another visitor from the other Canadian university next week). As I am a member of the International Office committee, I am always asked to come to our welcome lunch and/or dinner. I've already got something to do in the evening, so I only went to a lunch party today.

Usually, this kind of party is very casual and relaxed, but this time the president of the partner school as well as the director of the English programme came, so our president and chancellor also came to the lunch unusually.

I haven't been to Canada and have seen only a few Canadians in my life, so I really didn't know what Canadian English is like.

English of the course director was very listener-friendly probably because she is used to speaking to non-native English speakers. However, President's English was so difficult to understand. It is true, the speed of his speech was fast, but speaking fast doesn't simply lead to difficulty. I think one of the big reasons lies in different intonation patterns.

Even though they are speaking the same language, their accents and rhythms are very different between countries and regions. I'm used to British English, but for many Japanese, British English is not easy to understand, simply because they haven't had much chance to listen to it. Likewise, for me, Canadian English is very new, so I haven't acquired sufficient exemplars of this particular language.

So, it is very important to understand, when you say 'I'm learning English', which 'English' you mean. Even if you master American English, for example, you cannot speak other Englishes. Paradoxically, as English is becoming an international language, more varieties have emerged. (Of course, Japanese English is one of the varieties.)