Canadian raising

Canadian raising is a phonetic phenomenon that occurs in varieties of the English language, especially Canadian English, in which diphthongs are "raised" before voiceless consonants (e.g., /p/, /t/, /k/, /s/, /f/). /aɪ/ (the vowel of "eye") becomes ʌj, while the outcome of /aʊ/ (the vowel of "loud") varies by dialect, with [ʌw] more common in the west and a fronted variant [ɛʉ] commonly heard in Central Canada. In any case, the /a/ component of the diphthong changes from a low vowel to a mid vowel or else a back vowel ([ʌ] or [ɛ]). As [əʊ] is an allophone of /oʊ/ (as in "road") in many other dialects, the Canadian pronunciation of "about the house" may sound like "a boat the hoce" to non-Canadians. American stand-up and situation comedians exaggerate this to "oot and aboot" for comic effect. To Canadians, the American pronunciation of "about the house" may sound like "a bat the hass."

These exaggerated pronunciations represent an attempt to approximate Canadian raising with sounds only available in the speakers' own dialects. Because this approximation is imperfect, individuals who do speak with Canadian raising will frequently be baffled by reports that they are being perceived as saying "aboot". Such people can note the difference in pronunciation between words with and without Canadian raising: "house" (verb) and "house" (noun), "lies" and "lice," etc. Americans, on the other hand, are often completely flummoxed and flabbergasted by reports that they are being perceived as saying "abat."

Geographic distribution

Despite its name, the phenomenon is not restricted to Canada; it is quite common in New England and Minnesota, Upper Michigan, and other upper Midwestern states, and has been reported in the traditional accent of Martha's Vineyard, as well as in Southern Atlantic varieties of English and in the Fens in England. True Canadian raising affects both the /aʊ/ and /aɪ/ diphthongs, but a related phenomenon, of much wider distribution throughout the United States, affects only the /aɪ/ diphthong. So, whereas the General American pronunciations of "rider" and "writer" are identical [ɹaɪɾɚ], those whose dialects include either the full or restricted Canadian raising will pronounce them as [ɹaɪɾɚ] and [ɹʌɪɾɚ], respectively. (In British English, these words would be pronounced [ɹaɪdə] and [ɹaɪtə], respectively.) This raising of /aɪ/ can be found in the Pacific Northwest, New England, and Philadelphia, and probably in many other parts of the country as well, as it appears to be spreading. Note also that this phenomenon preserves the recoverability of the phoneme /t/ in "writer" despite the North American English process of flapping, which merges /t/ and /d/ into [ɾ] before unstressed vowels.

Varieties

For many speakers, Canadian raising applies not only before voiceless consonants, but more generally in a non-final syllable of a morpheme. This is sensitive to morpheme boundaries in a word. For such speakers, "rider" and "spider" do not rhyme, since the former has a morpheme boundary before the "-er", and hence the voiced /d/ inhibits raising, whereas the latter has no such boundary, and hence raising can apply freely in a non-morpheme-final syllable. Similarly, "pilot" and "pile it" may be non-homophonous, since the former has a raised diphthong (due to its being in a non-morpheme-final syllable) while the latter has a normal, non-raised diphthong—although in such circumstances (before resonant consonants, it seems), the raising may be optional for some speakers. There are many other dialect-specific complexities: For example, even the speakers just described, for whom "rider" and "spider" do not rhyme, may differ on whether raising applies in "hydrogen", although unquestionably it does apply to "nitrogen".

Possible origins

The phenomenon of Canadian raising may be related historically to a similar phenomenon that exists in Scots and Scottish English. The Scottish Vowel Length Rule lengthens a wide variety of vowel sounds in several environments, and shortens them in others; "long" environments include when the vowel precedes a number of voiced consonant sounds. This rule also conditions /aɪ/ in the long environments and /əɪ/ in the short environments. Significantly, though, the Scots Vowel Length Rule applies only before voiced fricatives and /r/, whereas Canadian raising is not limited in this fashion; thus, it may represent a sort of merging of the Scots Vowel Length Rule with the general English rule lengthening vowels before voiced consonants of any sort.

The most common understanding of the Great Vowel Shift is that the Middle English vowels [iː, uː] passed through a stage [əɪ, əʊ] on the way to their modern pronunciations [aɪ, aʊ]. Thus it is difficult to say whether Canadian raising reflects an innovation or the preservation of an older vowel quality in a restricted environment.

Bibliography

• Chambers, J. K. "Canadian raising". Canadian Journal of Linguistics 18.2 (1973): 113–35.
• Dailey-O'Cain, J. "Canadian raising in a midwestern U.S. city". Language Variation and Change 9,1 (1997): 107–120.
• Labov, W. "The social motivation of a sound change". Word 19 (1963): 273–309.
• Wells, J. C. Accents of English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982.

See also

• Canadian Shift
• North American English regional phonology