General American English (GAE) and Standard Canadian English (SCE) are the standard varieties of American and Canadian English. When you turn on a major news channel in either country, chances are that you’re hearing these standard varieties. While both GAE and SCE share quite a few features, they also differ in a few aspects. In this post, I’ll be discussing one of these aspects – Canadian raising.
In just about any American film or TV show, when it comes to Canada, there’s almost definitely going to be an aboot joke. While this might irritate us Canucks, the reality is that there is some truth to this trope.
What is Canadian raising?
Canadian raising is the linguistic phenomenon that refers to when speakers of SCE raise the pronunciation of the sounds aye and ow before certain consonants in words like price and about. The symbols I’ve used here belong to the International Phonetic Alphabet – an alphabet system created to represent sounds accurately.
By raise, what I mean is that the sounds aye and ow are pronounced with the tongue in a higher position in the mouth by some speakers. This raise can be represented as the sounds shifting from aye and ow to uh-ee and uh-o .
Where do we hear Canadian raising?
A speaker of SCE would pronounce the words rider and writer differently (they’d raise the aye sound in writer). The same happens with the words cloud and clout (the ow sound would be raised in clout). You’ll notice the same effect when asking a speaker of SCE to say the words prize and price. The position of the aye sound in the latter is noticeably raised. This is why when a stereotypical speaker of SCE says a word like about, it might sound jarring to speakers of English who don’t raise the aye and ow sounds. Though, to be entirely honest, hearing a Canadian say aboot is incredibly unlikely, as they’re more likely to pronounce it along the lines of aboat!
These days it’s not uncommon to find Canadian raising in a number of dialects even outside the ambit of SCE. A large number of GAE speakers have also been found to possess this tendency, though it’s generally less pronounced (no pun intended). However, Canadian raising remains a characteristic feature of the way many Canadians speak.
What can Canadian raising teach us?
Ultimately, I think that while Canadian raising might not be the most beautiful variation in the English language, it certainly has its endearing aspects. With the changes taking place in the way English is being spoken around the world, acknowledging and appreciating the tiny quirks that make our accents what they are is something I think we can all learn from.
What quirks have you noticed in the way that you and others speak? Has anyone ever asked you about your accent?
