I think that’s it exactly. I would think that almost everyone pronounces the “ou” in “lout” and “loud” differently, and to my ear the Canadian “about” has the “lout” diphthong while the American has the “loud” diphthong. If that’s not precisely accurate in describing the difference, it’s pretty damn close.
So you live in Canada then? I’ve noticed that, too. No one here has an accent.
Obviously I mean the real Canada, what the Newfies call “the mainland”. With the exception of Quebec, of course, where everyone sounds exactly like this.
Half? Really? I don’t see that in your “Canadian Encyclopedia” link.
Interestingly, it has this to say:
“That (Canadians getting jobs in U.S. broadcasting) is despite - or because of - such distinctions as a marked accent and a different way of viewing the world. “Canadians do say ‘eh’ and they pronounce out and about as oot and aboot,” insists Andrew Heyward, president of CBS News…(Peter) Jennings describes (an early) experience as “my great failure.” Critics carped that he was too pretty, inexperienced and young. Jennings insisted on using Canadianisms - pronouncing lieutenant as lef-tenant, and schedule as shedule. Viewers were irritated or unimpressed, and the ratings did not improve.”
You know, I actually anticipated a retort like that and almost worded it differently, but thought, to hell with it. No, not literally half. Not even remotely close to half. Merely a hyperbolic allusion to the concept of “many”, and the fact that you do not, in fact, have large numbers of TV viewers exclaiming “hey, another Canadian!” after hearing them for 30 seconds. The same goes for a lot of A-list Hollywood actors. People on both sides of the border who don’t know these individuals’ histories are usually surprised to hear they are Canadian ex-pats.
In fact, as I noted earlier, I read somewhere that the reason so many Canadian broadcasters are hired by US networks is the perceived accent-neutral speech, so that you don’t get perceptions of regional and cultural bias.
I saw that, and I don’t agree with it. See the discussion above regarding “about” and the comparison with “lout” and “loud”. The whole “aboot” thing is idiotic and probably arose from someone’s idea of satire.
My grandmother was from Sarnia. She had a Michigan accent for some reason, maybe having to do with living in Port Huron. When I lived in the GTA for a year, I easily adopted an Ontario accent, which I suppose is easy because I grew up watching Gobal.
You can read about Canadian raising here. As mentioned before, we do a similar thing here in the US in various dialects, including my own, with “writer” and “rider.” “Rider” gets the standard “eye”/“long i” /aɪ/ diphthong, but “writer” gets raised to /ʌɪ/, so something starting with more of an “uh” sound instead of an “ah” sound. You can also notice it in the pair “I scream” and “ice cream,” where the "long i"s in both examples sounds different in many American accents. (For me, without using IPA, the distinction would be like saying “AHY” vs “UHY.”)
Like with Canadian raising, it occurs before unvoiced consonants, but not before voiced consonants.
I was thinking of that Michael Palin song and it occurred to me that in Canada they say “lumberjack” because when you say “logger” it makes Canadians thirsty.
The first A is the A in man, while the second A is the A in about. That is the standard pronunciation across all of English, as far as I know.
Now the A in man varies a bit, depending on the pre-nasal raising of the /æ/ vowel. It can [meən] or [mæn] or anything in between. (The former might be spelled out as may-un if someone is spelling out dialect. But that’s the best I can do without IPA. Even IPA has trouble distinguishing between the exact vowels, as it was not designed to do so.)
But it still is never the a in about. And the final A is never the A as in man. They are always different. I would be very, very surprised if you recorded yourself saying the word “Santa” and both used the same vowel.
This is odd to me. You don’t schwa the last syllable? I’m looking at Wiktionary, and in all the English variants, the final syllable is a schwa. Maybe we’re just hearing the vowels differently. Here on Forvo you can find three Canadians pronouncing “pasta” and in all three cases, I hear a schwa at the end.
It’s not the final vowel that sounds different to me, but the middle vowel. What Leaffan is describing matches my pronunciation : “past-a”, not “paast -a”
Oh, the Ottawa Valley thing is bang on. There is definitely a subtle hint of Irish in the accent. The word “bank” sounds a bit like “boink” and “tiger” comes across as “tager.”
In all the provinces I’ve lived, the common theme I’ve noticed is that urbanites always seems to tease rural folk for having strong accents. This has been true in Nova Scotia (Haligonians will say that Capers/valley folk talk funny), Quebec (everyone criticizes every region for some imagined/real linguistic quirk), Ottawa (will always point out the valley as people who speak differently).
I have yet to live in other places in Canada, but I’m starting to think this tendance is universal.
