wales@ucla-cs.UUCP (08/01/84)
In regard to Dave Gurr's recent suggestion <277@west44.UUCP> about a
discussion of American/English language differences, perhaps a discus-
sion of American/Canadian differences would also be interesting. I
trust there are enough Canadians reading this newsgroup to make such a
discussion productive.
I have tried to do quite a bit of research lately on the specifics of
Canadian English pronunciation. Rather than confine my study to differ-
ences in the way words are pronounced (e.g., "resources" is pronounced
"REE-sor-siz" by most Americans, but "re-ZOR-siz" by most Canadians), I
have been trying to analyze the differences in pronunciation of individ-
ual phonemes (e.g., differences between American and Canadian pronunci-
ations of the vowel sound in the word "day"). Surprisingly, even in the
linguistics journals I have been able to find, hardly anything seems to
have been said in this area other than the well-known distinctive pro-
nunciation of the vowel sounds in words such as "about" and "night" --
yet there are clearly other very definite differences which can easily
identify a Canadian speaker even in an extended utterance totally devoid
of "ou" sounds.
I realize, of course, that there is no such thing as "the" American pro-
nunciation, or "the" Canadian pronunciation. When I talk about "Ameri-
can" speech in the following comparisons, I will be referring to the
Californian dialect which I grew up with all my life (and which, because
of the network media, is about as close to a national standard as we
have). Please, no flames from people in other parts of the US for whom
this dialect may be foreign, or even offensive.
I would be very interested in any comments anyone can make regarding
regionalisms in Canadian pronunciation. With the obvious exception of
certain British-dialect enclaves, Canadian speech seems much more homo-
geneous than American speech -- but I assume that differences still
exist. Unfortunately, I often know that a given speaker on radio or TV
is Canadian without knowing exactly where he/she is from; hence, it is
difficult for me to amass much region-specific data. (On more than one
occasion, I have seriously considered writing the producers of the Nick-
elodeon network show "You Can't Do That On Television" in order to find
out where in Canada the various kids come from!)
Here are my observations on vowels. (Of course, I can't use IPA sym-
bols, since they don't exist in ASCII; hopefully people will still be
able to understand what I'm saying.) Vowels for which I have made no
specific comments below are, I claim, pronounced identically by Canadi-
ans and Americans.
"ou" before voiceless consonants (as in "out" or "house")
In Canadian pronunciation, the first component of the "ou" diphthong
is "raised" or "closed" (creating something like "uh-oo") when fol-
lowed by a voiceless consonant. This observation is surely obvious
to any American who has ever heard a Canadian speak.
I understand, by the way, that a similar pronunciation occurs in
parts of the US (specifically, some areas in Virginia and West Vir-
ginia) -- but it is definitely not characteristic of American speech
in general.
Actually, I have heard some four different pronunciations of this
diphthong in Canadian speakers (these varieties may in fact be
points along a continuum):
(1) "uh-oo" (as described above).
(2) "ah-oo" (identical to standard American). Believe it or not,
this pronunciation often occurs in Canadian speech, even when
the word in question is stressed.
(3) "oh-oo" (almost identical to the American pronunciation of "o"
in "boat").
(4) Difficult to describe: similar to (1), but with the tongue
more forward and the lips less rounded. ("You Can't Do That On
Television" fans will hear this sound when Lisa Ruddy says the
word "about" in stressed, sentence-final position.)
I have frequently heard all four of the above pronunciations used by
the same speaker on the same word -- and I really can't figure out
any consistent formula to determine which pronunciation will be used
in any given context (it seems to be practically random).
"i" (as in "right")
In Canadian pronunciation, the first component of the "i" diphthong
is "raised" or "closed" (creating something like "uh-ee") when fol-
lowed by a voiceless consonant -- similarly to the treatment of "ou"
as described above).
"a" (as in "pat")
Many/most Canadians pronounce the "short 'a'" phoneme with the
tongue slightly farther back than Americans do -- closer to "ah",
and very similar to the corresponding British sound. Since this
phoneme is apparently more common in English than "ou", I often find
it easier to spot a Canadian by noting his/her pronunciation of the
short "a".
"a" (as in "pay")
The Canadian phoneme tends to be much less diphthongized -- more of
a "pure" vowel -- than the American phoneme (which is definitely an
"eh-ee" diphthong). Contrast the Canadian and the American pronun-
ciations of "eh?", for example (yes, believe it or not, Americans do
say "eh?" once in a while).
"o" (as in "no")
As with the above "a" phoneme, the Canadian "o" seems to be less
diphthongized than the American version (which is definitely an
"oh-oo" diphthong). Contrast the Canadian and American pronuncia-
tions of the telephone greeting "hello?", for example -- or the
pronunciations of the phrase "a boat". (I suspect that an American
saying "a boat" would sound to a Canadian like "about" -- comments?)
"a" (as in "car")
Most of the time, this phoneme is pronounced identically by Canadi-
ans and Americans. Before "r", however, some Canadian speakers
appear to use a sound closer to the "short 'a'" (as in "pat"). Fans
of "You Can't Do That On Television" will note this feature in the
speech of Kevin (Ilyanovich Rasputin) Kubucheskie.
I suspect this may be a regionalism (western Canada?), but I don't
have enough data to tell for sure (i.e., I generally don't know what
parts of Canada the speakers I have listened to are from).
"o" (as in "not")
"aw" (as in "paw")
Americans (and, lest I get flames from New Englanders, let me repeat
that I am referring only to the Californian pronunciation) generally
pronounce the "o" in "not" identically to the "a" in "father". The
American "aw" in "paw" is quite similar to the corresponding British
sound. The two sounds are quite distinct -- "cot" and "caught" are
not homophones in American speech.
Canadians, on the other hand, tend to pronounce both these phonemes
alike -- and with a sound about halfway between the two American
sounds. Some CBC announcers -- in particular, a female announcer
named (if I remember correctly) Barbara Smith -- use a sound even
closer to the British/American "aw", but I suspect this may not be
typical of Canadians in general.
On a related point:
Probably the Canadian whose speech Americans are most familiar with
today would be Peter Jennings of ABC News. I can tell that he has made
some effort to adopt American speech patterns, but he still most defi-
nitely does not sound like an American, and in fact his native accent
seems pretty much intact to me as far as I can tell. Since he was a TV
announcer in Canada before coming to the US, I assume he probably made
an effort to become a careful, "educated" speaker -- to the extent that
he might possibly sound "strange" even to his countrymen. Could any
Canadians out there comment on what Jennings sounds like to them?
-- Rich Wales
wales@UCLA-LOCUS.ARPA
...!{cepu,ihnp4,ism780,trwspp,ucbvax}!ucla-cs!wales