It’s OK. You were trying to get laid. Just say that next time. 
Why do Canadians get so miffed when it gets pointed out that they round their ‘ow’ sounds? It would be like me telling everyone that it’s TV that makes you think I pronounce ‘merry’, ‘marry’ and ‘Mary’ differently from each other.
And really, it’s not that we are making it up to upset you. I remember wondering why Peter Jennings always said ‘oot’-- this was long before I knew that he was Canadian. My son once had someone drop out of a raid on WOW because he asked one of them if he was Canadian (on Vent).
“I don’t say ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’! You’re just being an ass. I say ‘oot’ and ‘aboot’ just like anybody else!”
Penis ensued. His Guildie was so upset he didn’t sign on again for a week.
Heh, well, I say “Root” to rhyme with “Boot”, “Moot” (or the Canadians-as-seen-on-American-TV “About” ;)), roof rhymes with “hoof” or “poof” (with that “ooooh” sound), Aunt will usually sound like “Ant” but sometimes will be “Ohnt” (I have been known to make the lame joke about “Ants and Uncles”).
American accents and speaking patterns, of course, vary widely based on where you encounter them. I can usually recognize if someone is hispanic based on how they talk. No Spanish/Mexican/Whatever accent to speak of, just a certain pacing and the way they clip some of their vowel sounds. I cracked up one of my teachers when I was studying Chinese by speaking Chinese with a very thick “hick” Texas draw. It’s totally unintelligible in Mandarin to a native speaker when you do that, you just sound like a stroke victim (not entirely unlike how Beijingren speak Mandarin… :D)
I’ve been told variously that I speak like a Northerner (by Texans) and that I speak like a cowboy (by Northeners). My fiance says I am picking up a Kansas accent, but I have never been able to even recognize the existence of such a thing. They just all talk kinda flat around here. I’ve moved around a lot since I was 3 though, so my speaking habits can be… fluid.
And of course, I’m in the military. We speak at least four different languages in the US Armed Forces (Army, Navy, Air Force, and Neander- er… Marine). There is also a bit of a joke that the US Army, as a whole, tends to have an institutionalized Southern drawl, most noticable when you hear someone address an NCO as “Sa’arn’t”. This is probably because most of their training bases are located in Texas, Oklahoma, and the South. I’ve found that in the Air Force, I can usually get away with calling most of my NCO’s “Sa’arn’t” without any negative response.
See if you can follow this, without even worrying about accents, to see how much fun speaking Military is:
Tomorrow is a Prime BEEF day, so report to the Fire Department for formation at zero-six-fifty instead of PT at the Gym. Some of y’all will have SABC training, and a few of you are going to get trained on the Humvee and the Deuce-and-a-half. The rest of you, just work on getting your CBTs current since we have the Wing UCI coming up in a few weeks.
That’s a bit of Air Force Civil Engineer talk, with only a light sampling of our daily Alphabet Soup. I am fluent in Army, and I can understand most day-to-day Navy. I can only really start to understand fluent Marine after the third shot of bourbon 
Probably because it gets annoying that outsiders keep telling us we’re doing something we’re not doing (and that is abowt the ONLY thing they seem to know abowt us - well, that and “Canadian” bacon, which is called back bacon in Canada).
But you DO do it. Maybe not all of you-- I haven’t heard every Canadian speak-- but it is a characteristic of the Canadian accent. It’s not shameful or something you need to deny and definitely not something you need to get so upset about.
Okay, sincere question for the Canadians, now that we’re on this topic:
Can we at least agree that there is a Canadian inflection on the “ow” sound that appears in the words “house” and “about” that is different from the way Americans usually pronounce those words? I’m not going to get into what that sound is, but can we at least agree that there is a slight accent diversion on this sound?
I can’t tell if Canadians genuinely believe there is no accent differentiation between themselves and American on this sound, or if they just don’t like the way Americans interpret it.
Where’s Helen’s Eidolon? She had a particularly amusing (to me) revelation a couple years ago when she realized that Canadians and Americans pronounce that sound differently.
Ahhhh! I thought he was South African 
I think I know him. His name is Noah. Nice guy.
Well, so am I!
Actually, this was brought up in another thread I participated in here (on “Trailer Park Boys”) and a helpful poster explained to me the phenomenon is called Canadian raising."
Also interesting in that link:
Now, not every Canadian I’ve met has Canadian raising in their speech, but I’d say probably more than half the Canadians I know do. Other than the occasional raising, their accent is more-or-less indistinguishable to me from a standard American accent. It’s natural to think you don’t have an accent. I don’t feel like I have a noticeable Chicago accent (especially compared with people I know who have really strong Chicago accents.) But my accent is noticeable enough that people in tune with such things will easily place me as Chicagoan (or possibly Clevelander). I could swear I speak a very flat, standard newscaster Midwestern English. Apparently, I don’t.
When I was studying abroad in Europe, I once pegged a new acquaintance as Canadian by her “ow” sounds. She looked at me in surprise and said, “How did you know, eh?”
That link also better describes what the “ou” sound in Canadian raising accents actually is:
So, and this is a rough approximation, the “ou” sound in most American dialects of “about” is something like a diphthongized version of “ah-oo”. The Canadian variations are more like “uh-oo” and “eh-oo” (although there are slight differences in the second half of the diphthong, as well.) If one were writing it out, maybe “a-bahwt” vs “a-buhwt” vs “a-behwt.” So not quite “aboot” or “aboat” or anything in there, but kind of in between. FWIW, to my ears it sounds nothing like the South Park approximation of the Canadian accent.
Canadians: you sound different to our ears. Cope. I would think y’all would like something that differentiates you from us Yanks, since you are not Yanks and all… YMMV.
I would like to think I’m not as nasal as most Chicagoans (and I’m not, but compared to someone from Boston or Long Island, my nasality is noticeable). It’s neither good nor bad; it just is.
Cadence has a lot to do with speech recognition for me. I honed in on someone at a cocktail party several years ago by this (she had no accent I could detect). Turns out she was from Sweden, but many, many years prior to this. Her English was flawless, as was her accent, but the rhythm of her speech signaled to me that she was not an American (and given she was white, blonde etc, I assumed she was from Europe). Canadians (the ones I have spoken to), do have a different cadence than Chicagoans.
I certainly do know more about Canada than abowt, howse and Canadian bacon (which I didn’t know until this thread, so thanks for that). For Tim Horton’s alone, we owe you a great debt…
For me, it’s “sorry.” It’s also an instant clue.
I hear the vowel sound all the time in Vancouver, more pronounced from people who have moved from somewhere east. But I’ve never had a problem understanding Canadians.
I’ve been watching the following UK-based TV programs recently without any trouble understanding. I have a harder time with southeast Asian and Aussie/NZ English:
Big Brother UK
Derren Brown Specials
Dragon’s Den (UK)
The F Word
Kitchen Nightmares (UK)
Law and Order UK
Trust Me, I’m a Dealer
My background: Southern California Latino living in Japan
I met a Canadian one time in Northern Ireland and said “Oh you’re from Canada?” and he said “How’d you know I was from Canada, eh? People round here think I’m from Holland.”
When she worked in insurance claims for the City of Memphis my wife found it necessary to affect a Southern accent because her Gage Park accent was incomprehensible. Only time I notice it is when she calls the local branch of the Albertsons chain “Jewels” or “Jewel’s.” Plural or possessive, it’s incorrect, stupid, and localizing, especially if one is white, to the south and southwest sides of Chicago.
A sibilant “S,” as in Duh Bearss, is a general Chicago thing. (watching the link) No, like that is totally SW-Side Polish. Like the love of my life! Except when she channels her Cornish and Welsh relatives.
I should talk. Mine is mostly bland but with Southern-isms (had to explain to my kids that a “core” is something you drive) and Minnesota-isms. But that points to why the Midwestern US accent is most universal on TV and radio: It is a region of immigrants from all over Europe and the Eastern Seaboard. My ancestors were both literate and they had to make themselves comprehensible to folks from all of Europe and a good part of Africa. This resulted in a flat accent that often pronounces, sometimes painfully, every last apparent syllable in a foreign word, even if a native would slur it all together.
Aside: Saw a show tonight in which Watson, Alexander Graham Bell’s assistant, spoke in some abortion of a West Texas accent. Watson was from Salem, Massachusetts, home of the Salem Witch Trials. Yes, by the 1870s his accent would’ve shifted some, but the show (originally German but dubbed by Brits) shifted it a couple thousand miles. The fellow who dubbed Bell, a Scot, was vaguely German.
I had always understood that Glaswegian was more a “dialect” than an “accent.” I’m not sure, cause I haven’t actually been to Scotland, but this seems to be an example :
(Warning, strong language)
Heh. Your wife is from the neighborhood next door to mine (Archer Heights, well it’s more kitty corner.) Those SW side Polish-inflected Chicago accents can be pretty nasally and rough. And, yes, it’s “I’m goin’ ta da Jewel’s” around here, not “I’m going to Jewel.” I didn’t think this was Southwest Side specific, but I could be wrong. I think Northwest Siders do it, too. It’s a common general Chicagoism.
It’s both. Accent is solely about pronunciation, but dialect is about more than that - grammar, vocab, etc. Glaswegian is both a dialect and an accent.