Canadian raising question - again

I am from southwestern Pennsylvania and I differentiate between "writer" and "rider", as I have read that many people in the US do.

But I also differentiate between "cider" and "sider", which are not homophones. Cider, spider, writer, and fighter are the same while rider are sider are the same. Likewise, "tidy" doesn't rhyme with "mighty" or "tighty". I have read that this happens in some areas, but my question is where? It obviously must happen here in this part of Pennsylvania, since I have it. Are there areas that pronounce some of those examples the same while others are different?

Also, this is considered as part of Canadian raising, right?

This is an interesting question that has been brought up at times in the past. The thing is that Canadian Raising has a classical case, raising before fortis (that is, voiceless) obstruent phonemes, but in some dialects in the US (but not Canada, interestingly) it also may occur elsewhere. The primary other case of such that often shows up is that historical /aɪ̯/ may be raised by a /ər/ following it somewhere in the same morpheme, which may be separated from it by one or more lenis (aka voiced) obstruent phonemes. This explains words such as "cider" and "sider".

As for "tidy" versus "mighty" and "tighty", that is just a matter of Canadian Raising preserving distinctions that are otherwise often lost or reduced, just like with "writer" versus "rider".

I've never heard of the "Canadian raising" before but I can work out what it refers to.

It's good to you know that you guys over there are able to distinguish the two nationalities by their accents - Canadian and American - with relative ease, which is more than we can over here in Europe, but as ever that's due to familiarity and closer proximity to each other is it not?

The greatest insult Canadians can have hurled at them here in the UK is the immediate assumption that they are Americans, and only a minority of us are able to recognise the subtle difference in the pronunciation of certain sounds, the most well known is, of course, the Canadian "oot" for "out" sound. Apparently we Scots should automatically recognise a person who comes from Nova Scotia but I very much doubt many of us could. We could possibly tell a person from Quebec though, but I wouldn't swear to that.

Many Canadians here make a determined effort to sport the red maple leaf as a means of proclaiming their nationality, like the barman at a pub I go to here in Edinburgh, but who has now, sadly, moved away to a new job up in Angus....still in Scotland as he loves us so much! ;-)

<<As for "tidy" versus "mighty" and "tighty", that is just a matter of Canadian Raising preserving distinctions that are otherwise often lost or reduced, just like with "writer" versus "rider".>>

Yeah, only after I had made the post did I realize that my example of "tidy" and "tighty" was just like that of rider/writer.

I have a few other questions. In what parts of the US and Canada does this occur? This raising in words like cider and spider. Is it uniform? Also, are there accents in the US which have no raising whatsoever, so that writer and rider are the same? And lastly, are there any regions in Canada which completely lack Canadian raising?

Most English dialects in the US lack Canadian Raising, but it seems that Canadian Raising has been spreading over time in the US, especially that of /aɪ̯/, which seems to be spreading quite rapidly. (For instance, the younger someone is here in southeastern Wisconsin, the more likely they are to have more consistent and more strongly realized Canadian Raising of /aɪ̯/; it is very common for older people here to practically lack it and for middle-aged people to be very inconsistent and weak in their realization if, while it is practically universal, and generally consistently strong realized, amongst younger people here.)

As for "cider" and "spider", this is apparently not found in Canada. Also, it seems to not be necessarily consistent, in that it has not occurred for all words in which it could occur. For instance, Canadian Raising occurs in "cider", "spider", and any less familiar words of the form "-iber" (such as the "Tiber river" or "Siberia"), but does not occur in "fiber", "miser", or "visor", amongst others. Hence one could say that historical /aɪ̯/ at least here has undergone a phonemic split between its raised and unraised realizations, due to their distribution having become lexicalized in certain kinds of cases.

I've heard Canadian raising with voiced consonants: in the word ''houSes'' for example. Do notice that Canadian raising is not used with equal frequency across Canada, in the extreme West (Vancouver, Victoria) and Northeast (NewFoundland) the unraised variant is more frequent.

Yes, I've noticed it in words like "houses".

''It's good to you know that you guys over there are able to distinguish the two nationalities by their accents - Canadian and American''

ask them how they call their money

99% of Canadians pronounce dOllar with the rounded vowel ['dQl@r]
99% of Americans pronounce dOllar with the unrounded vowel ['dAl@r] (as in RP father) [and in Chicago it's ['dal@r] ]

;)

Many Canadians do use a rounded vowel, but there are also a lot of Canadians who use an unrounded vowel, and they surely account for more than 1% of the population. Likewise, in the US, there is a fair number of people in New England, Pennsylvania and the West who would use a rounded vowel there.

<<99% of Americans pronounce dOllar with the unrounded vowel ['dAl@r] (as in RP father)>>

I'm American and I say something much closer to ['dQl@r]. ;)

>>Many Canadians do use a rounded vowel, but there are also a lot of Canadians who use an unrounded vowel, and they surely account for more than 1% of the population. Likewise, in the US, there is a fair number of people in New England, Pennsylvania and the West who would use a rounded vowel there.<<

At least from hearing people in the national media, it seems like there is an awfully large percentage of people who frequently have rounded realizations of the FATHER/BOTHER, or as I would suspect, the FATHER/BOTHER/COUGHT vowel, and these people generally do not sound like Canadians either. (This sticks out to me because the FATHER/BOTHER vowel is never rounded here except before /r/, where a good portion of the population here uses [ɒ(ː)] or sometimes even [ɔ(ː)].)

-I'm American and I say something much closer to ['dQl@r]. ;) -

Well, you're in those 1 % of Americans. ;)


Canadian teenage TV series use a Canadian accent with high frequency of rounded [Q]: John, hot, dog, doll, dollar, caller/collar, dawn/Don, gone, song, Toronto...

Canadian movies made for global broadcasting avoid [Q] and prefer [A].

All Canadian actors in Hollywood have [A] in ''John, doll, dollar, dawn/Don, gone, song, Toronto...'' (Ellen Page, Pamela Anderson, Jim Carey, just to name some of them)...


One can recognize Canadians because of progressive Canadian vowel shift.
Californian vowel shift is more of a fad, very small percentage of Californians use it after they leave high school.

<<Well, you're in those 1 % of Americans. ;)


Canadian teenage TV series use a Canadian accent with high frequency of rounded [Q]: John, hot, dog, doll, dollar, caller/collar, dawn/Don, gone, song, Toronto...>>

Seeing how everyone does it hear and I've heard it in other areas as well, I'd say it's much more than 1 %.

I say [Q] in all of those words as well.

for me spider is like mighter if that were a word. the spid of spider is the same as spite and the same as might.

I say [Q] in all of those words as well.
.................................
So, I guess you use RP.