Canadian Raising (the PRICE and MOUTH sets)

Canadian Raising, the pronunciation of the diphthongs /aɪ/ (PRICE) and /aʊ/ (MOUTH) with non-low nuclei when they occur before voiceless consonants, was first systematically analyzed by Joos (1942), who noticed that raising interacts with flapping to produce apparently phonemic oppositions between raised and unraised vowels in pairs like writer vs. rider, at least in some varieties of Canadian English. Chambers (1973) showed how these patterns could be accounted for in a generative framework by means of variable rule ordering. Canadian Raising is by no means unique to Canada, even within North America. Raised nuclei in one or both diphthongs have been documented in eastern Virginia (Kurath and McDavid 1961), Martha’s Vineyard, Massachusetts (Labov 1972a), Philadelphia (Labov 1994), and the Inland North. Moreover, not all Canadians exhibit Canadian Raising: urban varieties in particular display considerable social variation in this regard, with some speakers raising less than others, or not at all. However, if it does not uniquely or consistently characterize all speakers of Canadian English, Canadian Raising nevertheless continues to be a reliable and distinctive identifier of Canadian speech in most of the country and is the basis of the most popular American stereotype of Canadian speech, if only as it applies to /aʊ/.

Even among those Canadians who show consistent Canadian Raising, its phonetic implementation is not uniform across Canada. Most Canadians have two principal allophones of /aɪ/ (raised to lower-mid position before voiceless consonants and low-central or low-back elsewhere) and three of /aʊ/ (raised before voiceless consonants, fronted to [aʊ] or [æʊ] before nasals, and low-central elsewhere). One of the few phonetic variables that divides Canadians regionally is the articulation of the raised allophone of /aʊ/. In Ontario, it tends to have a midcentral or even mid-front articulation, sometimes approaching [εʊ] , while in the West and Maritimes a more retracted sound is heard, closer to [Λʊ] . Among some speakers on the Prairies and in Nova Scotia, the retraction is strong enough to cause some tokens of raised /aʊ/ to merge with /oʊ/ , so that couch and coach sound the same, and about sounds like a boat (though never like a boot, as in the American stereotype of Canadian Raising).