Talk:Canadian raising

message: I have to agree with what "Piano non troppo" says in a comment on the history page, "That "out" example was used, for example in "The Story of English", no reason to remove it."  This is the easiest way to explain Canadian raising to Americans and other English speakers.  It really doesn't matter if a few Canadians don't like it.  The reason why this article doesn't make any sense is because someone keeps removing all of the easy to understand examples like this one.  
In response to a previous comment on the history page, Precision DOES matter in this case!  Without an accurate description of the issue it is impossible to really understand the subject!--63.229.24.98 (talk) 17:31, 10 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: "A boat"

message: Someone want to add some? 
The English language has about BIG NUMBER different pronunciation varieties... Not sure if I've ever heard anyone say out and oat the same, though I've heard one person's oat be another's out. 
Without Audio, I have no way to tell if something is Canadian raising or 'normal' when compared to something that is either New York lowering or 'normal'...
----
I'd appreciate an audio file that shows 'spider' and 'rider' not rhyming.  I'm Canadian, and I can't imagine how they would not rhyme.  (IPA vowel symbols strain my ability to memorize and hear in my mind's ear.)
:: I could potentially upload sound files showing the difference, since I pronounce the two vowels differently.  If you still want it, just let me know and I get to it soon.Esdraelon (talk) 04:18, 22 November 2007 (UTC
:::The article should be rewritten to be more clear.  Spider and rider do rhyme, but only "loosely".  I pronounce rider with a distinct "d", and spider somewhere between "spider" and "spiter"; the "d" in spider is somewhere between a "d" and a "t".  It's hard to tell whether it the syllables in "spider" are spi/der or spid/er, whereas "rider" is definitely ri/der.  If I exagerate the pronounciation to distinctly separate the syllables in spider to spi/der, then it rhymes with ri/der.  Conversly, they also rhyme if I "slur" rider so the syllables are indistinct in the manner described for spider--T. Mazzei (talk) 06:02, 29 November 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I'm from northern Indiana and I have Canadian raising (or maybe it ought to be called "American raising") of /aɪ̯/. "Spider" and "rider" kind of rime, but not exactly. "spider" is raised, "rider" isn't.--Montgolfière (talk) 01:51, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

text: I changed this in the Canadian English article, but will let someone else do it here. Writer/rider have distinct vowels across much of the US. Perhaps they haven't split in New York or Boston, but out West they fit the IPA transliteration given for Canadian perfectly. This was something I'd discovered in my own speech, and I can hear it in others' speech, but the Canadian English article was the first time I'd ever seen it described. /au/ does not do this, like you said: loudish and loutish are homonyms; to disambiguate, I'd need to break loutish into two words, loute ish, and enunciate the /t/ as [t]. No such spelling pronunciation is required for writer/rider. kwami 10:01, 23 September 2005 (UTC)
replies: text:  For me (an Ontarian), the vowels of loudish and loutish are different, and exhibit Canadian raising.  The "ou" of "lout" is the same as that of "about", which is the canonical example of Canadian raising. --Saforrest 18:36, 31 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Audio Clips

message: I always questioned the term "Canadian raising" when studying linguistics, because I thought it was an odd generalization for a large country. I grew up in British Columbia and raise on /aI/ but not on /aυ/, which always led me to think that "Canadian" raising as we understood it was an Ontario thing only. I have since appreciated that Prairie-dwellers have their own version of the phenomenon -- I hear it much less with /aυ/ in British Columbia -- but it is not an identical pronunciation to what is found in Ontario, for example. Is there actually anything uniformly 'Canadian' about "Canadian raising," or is it just a regional phenomenon, which happens in varying degrees, with little to do with the US/Canadian border? J21 20:23, 19 May 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, it's not isolated to Canada and not all Canadians do it.  I think it's called Canadian raising because the largest bloc of speakers who do it are Canadian. I could be wrong though.  AEuSoes1 02:53, 20 May 2006 (UTC)

text: Perhaps we could rename it to American Lowering. 216.239.45.4 (talk) 17:09, 12 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  How "Canadian" is Canadian raising? 

message: I have observed during my many years in the praries exactly what Saforrest mentioned about the loud and lout pronunciation in all the western Canadian provinces.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikilord17 (talk • contribs) 23:12, August 28, 2007 (UTC) 
For my part, I have noticed that my pronunciations of "fire" and "spire" do not rhyme. I apply "Canadian raising" to "fire" but not to "spire". This doesn't fit any of the cases described in the article. Am I atypical? I lived my first four years in North Dakota, but my parents were from Montana (father) and Chicago (mother). Eric Kvaalen (talk) 19:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Raising of /ay/ before /r/ in some or all words has been documented in some parts of the North and Northeast, but (as far as I know) not very seriously examined as a variable. As for me, I apply raising in both fire and spire but not wire; I'm from Beverly, Massachusetts. AJD (talk) 20:09, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

text: Yes, I also do not raise in the word "wire". By the way, my mother's parents were both from Boston (Dorchester). Is the raising we're talking about a feature of the Boston accent? Eric Kvaalen (talk) 16:05, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't know—I don't think any research has been done on this. AJD (talk) 18:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Could fire and spire be raised in non-rhotic Boston accents or does the  have to be there for the raising to take place? Thegryseone (talk) 05:16, 8 October 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Personal observations

message: Maybe I'm just reading it wrong, but there seems to be something missing between the first and second paragraphs, detailing the vowels used by non-Canadian speakers that are used to approximate Canadian vowels, and which have the effect of exaggerating the Canadian raising.  I don't know if it has been removed or was never there at all, but perhaps that section should be cleaned up a bit?
--65.95.137.181 (talk) 17:09, 25 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Missing section?

message: I'm from way south in Maryland, and I have the impression that raising  to  before nonvoiced consonants is nearly standard in "garden-variety" American English (you know, the speech that is without accent :-)). Is it not extremely common for speakers throughout the U.S. to follow the pattern of / in all pairs like:
:eyes/ice
:ride/right
:strive/strife, and
:tribe/tripe?
It even seems to me to be productive: it would apply for such a non-word pair as glizhe/glishe. Note that I am not asserting universality; as one example, I'm well aware that for some speakers tribe rhymes with drab. But is my intuition about the frequency of this raising south of the Canadian border way off?—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 03:11, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, and by the way, in the great rider/spider debate, for me the former is pronounced with  but the latter with . So unless I were speaking very slowly and carefully, I would not pronounce spider the same as I would the verb phrase "spied 'er."—PaulTanenbaum (talk) 03:21, 16 September 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: That is explained as a boundary effect. But if that's the reason, why do spider, tiger and cider, eider, Snider, Niger, Geiger not have the same vowels? Could this be a frequency effect, such as the number of syllables in every (2), memory (2-3), mammary (3)? — kwami (talk) 21:24, 10 September 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greater Canada 

message: My speech has "writer" and "rider" distinct. I grew up in Tucson AZ from age 4, nowhere near Canada ... go figure. (Before that, in New Haven CT. Possibly the distinction was learned that early and kept?) In the "great spider/rider debate" as someone termed it, naturally these words don't rhyme for me. The "spider" class has "spider", "tiger" and variably "cider" (a semi-common term in my speech, not as common as "spider" or "tiger"), while "geiger", "Snyder" etc. belong to the "rider" class, which makes me think this is indeed a frequency effect. 
Another strange case: "high school" (as an idiomatic term) is raised, but "high school" (interpreted literally) is not.
A similar frequency effect seems to apply in my pronunciation of written "o" before the sounds that ought to trigger the lot-cloth split in non-final syllables. In other words, my speech has the cot-caught distinction (despite having grown up in Tucson), and the "caught" vowel occurs consistently in monosyllabic words before /f/, /s/, /θ/, /ŋ/, /g/ except a few exceptions (e.g. "Goth", "scoff"), but quite variably before these same sounds in non-final syllables. "Offer", "often" and "coffee" have the "caught" vowel, but "proffer" and "Moffett" the "cot" vowel; "foster" usually the "caught" vowel, but "roster" and "Cossack" and "ossify" the "cot" vowel; "donkey" and "dongle" have the "caught" vowel, but "bongo", "Congo" and "Mongol" the "cot" vowel. It seems like words marked as [+proper-name] or [+Latinate] or [+foreign] are consistently without the shift, but others sometimes have the shift, esp. common words.
Finally, the same raising occurring in "writer" occurs with /ar/, hence "carter" and "carder" are different in my speech. (Likewise this raising is quite audible in words like "start" and "dark".) But this does *NOT* apply to any other sounds, hence "pouter/powder", "butter/budder", "metal/medal" are all the same. It seems like some people have generalized the lengthening before final voiced sounds into morpheme-final positions as well, similarly to what routinely happens in phonemic splits (e.g. the shifting of "o" to the "caught" vowel in my speech occurs in "frosting", "tosser", "longing", and anywhere else there's a clear morpheme boundary). Does this mean these people have incipient phonemic vowel length? Benwing (talk) 01:35, 20 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  carter vs. carder, frequency effects, etc. 

message: ʌɪ isn't referenced on the IPA page.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.122.14 (talk) 11:41, 11 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  ʌɪ 

message: I live in Ontario and virtually no one here exhibits Canadian raising except the extreme geriatric (over 90). Everyone else speaks general american. The "aboot/aboat" diphthong is something of a myth, all Canadians use the vowel and "loud" to say about. Ride and price always rhyme too- no raising there either.
Please delete this article. Canadian raising is extinct. Now just let the concept go..  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.224.205.57 (talk) 22:40, 17 October 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: Your anecdotal evidence needs to be substantiated by sources before it can justify the deletion of an entire article. I wouldn't claim to have any authority on this matter, not being a Canadian or a dialectologist, but I have certainly heard Canadian raising used by Canadians under 90 in various places in media. If Wikipedia were based on anecdotal evidence, my anecdotal evidence would perhaps disprove your nearly-universal claim. As it is, anecdotal evidence is worth nothing, and you need a source that supports your claim. (Furthermore, even if Canadian raising no longer exists, the article could not be deleted merely for that reason: the sound change existed at one point, and there would still need to be an article covering it.) — Eru·tuon 03:16, 18 October 2014 (UTC)

text: Stuff like "rhymes with" is to a large extent unacceptable in such articles - click here to read why. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 16:26, 28 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Canadian raising has entirely died off 

message: Is the second vowel really lax? The only pronunciation of school that I'm aware of has , not . — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 09:07, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's a detailed phonetic transcription of my pronunciation; it sounds to me like I pronounce  as  here, since the syllable is unstressed. Maybe it's OR to include such a detailed transcription based only on my pronunciation; if so, I will modify the transcription. However, in that case several other symbols would have to be changed, like  to . — Eru·tuon 09:24, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  TBH I've never seen reports about  laxing (while keeping it distinct from ) in North America. I'd change that to simple . I've also forgotten about the full–fool merger, but that is non-standard in probably all places but New Zealand. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 09:52, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:   is certainly not laxed before  in my dialect, but here I'm pronouncing school with vowel reduction, since it's the second part of a compound and the first part, high, is stressed. It seems that  reports reduction of  to . Are you saying that that type of reduction isn't reported for North American English? (It could be that I am reducing inappropriately in the recording — even as a native speaker.) — Eru·tuon 10:06, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  Let's invite  to the discussion. I'm not sure what to think. I certainly don't hear a central vowel there, it's rather back and it seems to me that it's the same as the onset of  in the second word. I've read only a tiny portion of literature that's available (there's new stuff released every day), so I couldn't know whether it is or isn't reported for North American English. The only thing I know is that I don't recall reading about it, at least not until reading the link that you provided. I'm not sure about the last sentence, if it's your normal pronunciation then there is nothing incorrect about it. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 10:23, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  After another listen, it sounds like you're right and the two vowel qualities are similar. However, I think they may be near-close rather than close (judging from the soundfiles here), in which case the second word would be transcribed . My judgement may still be faulty, though; perhaps they really are close, or at least begin slightly closer than near-close. — Eru·tuon 22:31, 24 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text:  I remember that you said that your  is laxer and more front than , i.e. . That certainly opens up the possibility of  being somewhat more open than fully close. Anyway, North American  is most often between cardinal 18 () and 8 (), i.e. advanced back. The default sound of IPA , which is not a cardinal vowel by the way, has more or less the same backness as the usual North American . (By the way, I've read some reports about the Southern UK  that it may be laxed to the point where  and  are distinguished only by length and sometimes a slight diphthongization of the latter. I'll link to them if I find them again.) All in all, I'd stick to  in both of your transcriptions, unless you really want to use  to transcribe the second word. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 22:57, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

text: Thanks. It's not that NAE monophthongs are prototypically short, it's that vowel length is merely allophonic (see pre-fortis clipping) in both GA and in GCan (see Wells (1982), volume 3). The same is true for traditional RP, because all its monophthongs have different quality ( and  may or may not have the same quality.) In modern RP however,  (realized as ) contrasts with  (realized as ) only through length. So, as you can see, the phonemicity of vowel length in English in general is variable. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 00:11, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Oh, I see. That sounds right. This difference isn't very explicitly described on Wikipedia, which is unfortunate. — Eru·tuon 02:29, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: See Vowel_length#Short_and_long_vowels_in_English. It could use some sourcing, but as far as I can see the whole section is correct. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 09:56, 25 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  [ˈhɐɪ.skʊɫ] 

message: I have just removed the section on possible origins.  There were two reasons for this, or really two which boil down to one.  It seemed to be opinion-based.  If a linguist made this assessment, I could justify the presence of the assessment on  the page.  However, as it was not sourced, I could not see the merit of its presences on the page.LakeKayak (talk) 22:47, 18 May 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: The source is probably one of Roger Lass's papers, but we need a full citation. Mr KEBAB (talk) 00:07, 19 May 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Possible origins