Why do Canadians say sorry, about and right differently?

[zweisamkeit]

@BigT

You may not, but those with the accent in question would say the same thing, as they don’t seem to notice it. It’s not exactly the same as those words. The point is that it’s more narrow than the way Americans say those words. It’s a known feature of the typical Canadian English: vowel raising.
My accent actually does something similar, but only in the specific case of /æ/ (a as in cat) before a nasal. It raises to become quite close to [e] (eh-uh, with “eh” being pronounced like the Canadian word). Yet most people will say they are just saying [æ]. Heck, even though I noticed the difference, it took a while before I could accept that it changed that much.

Ooooorrrrrr… Maybe the actual Canadian knows how they pronounce things better than a random non-Canadian person on the internet who’s never even heard them speak? :rolleyes:

It may shock you to find out that Canadian linguists have studied their own speech patterns! :eek: And yes, there are different Canadian dialects:

Almost all Canadians have Canadian raising (whereby the vowel in ‘about’ can sound slightly like American ‘a boat’). But around Toronto the diphthong tends to be fronted (bt or ‘a-beh-oot’), while in Western Canada and the Prairies it tends to be back (bt or ‘a-buh-oot’).

I’ve definitely heard the Torontonian “about” and it absolutely is very different from “a-boat”.