Canadian vowel shift -- strictly Canadian?

I went home for the fourth of July to the small Connecticut town where I grew up. Unlike much of the state, the area is very remote--a good 3 hours from New York, and maybe 2 hours from Boston. Few people make frequent trips to the nearest city, Hartford (about 40 minutes away), since there's very little of interest there.

Anyway, upon walking into the local liquor store, I came across a group of fairly working-class store employees chatting rather loudly. I noticed some slightly unusual features of their dialect that I probably never would have picked up on had I not left the area. Most strikingly, I find that their speech shared a lot of similarities with the phenomenon known as "Canadian Raising."

First of all, both "right" and "about" were fronted slightly more than in standard American English (to /rEit/ and /@bVUt/ respectively). Secondly, I noticed that the words "bet" and "bed" sounded virtually identical to the standard American "bat" and "bad," again similar to the Canadian vowel system.

Of course, there were serious differences as well--the /}/ in "cat" doesn't shift positions (unlike the Canadian tendency to turn it into /kat/). Furthermore "caught" and "cot," while only very slightly differentiated, remain subtely distinct.

Is this sign of a "shift," or is it possible that these are old dialect features that remain in more rural areas of the region?

Man, I wish I knew about this but I don't. I didn't know there was any Canadian Raising in CT. As for "bet" and "bed" being pronounced with [æ], that's also part of another shift far away from you in California, but I've also noticed it from some people in various parts of New Jersey. My guess, which could be wrong, is that the "right" and "about" raising are an old dialect feature while the "bet" and "bed" lowering may be new.

That's pretty interesting, Trawick! As Tom K. pointed out, the lowering of "bet" and "bed" (as part of a larger chain shift actually) are characteristic of the California Vowel Shift. Some linguists have postulated that since some of those changes have been happening in some Canadian areas, that this chain shift is the natural result of the "cot-caught" merger, where all the vowels move down to take the "empty" space gained by merging "cot" and "caught." However, since you said those speakers weren't "c-c" merged, that certainly doesn't fit that theory :) As for the Canadian Raising, it's apparently more widespread in the US than I'd previously thought. We've discussed some on who has and doesn't have it on this forum (originally a otemporary offshoot of antimoon while it was shut down but now it's own thing):

http://14.freebb.com/viewtopic.php?t=31&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&freebb=antimoonbis

I was surprised the guy (Lazar) from the Boston area had some degree of Canadian Raising. Canadian Raising, however, is not a feature of Californian English.

Well, to be fair, it seems to be sort of a "residual" feature--similar to the way that non-rhoticity is often variable in speakers from the Northeast.

One other thing I noticed was that the "U" in "bus" shifted to "Q," which if I recall is something of a Northern City Vowels shift feature.

Tom, one reason that I gather that the dialect is bit odd is that, if you look at the maps on your site, the area that I'm located is in a gap between ENE and WNE. I'd say that it's something of a "transitional" area, albeit a very small one. From living in the area, I would generally place the easternmost WNE town as probably Manchester, CT, and the westernmost ENE town as Killingly, right on the Rhode Island border. The forty miles or so in between is something of a mishmash of the two accents with some towns sounding more Western and others more Eastern.

There's definitely a good deal of /aU/ fronting in the Boston area, a dialect feature which is often overshadowed by the accent's more conspicuous features (non-rhoticity and c-c mergering). This goes back a while, actually--18th century newpapers used to mock the Bostonian pronunciation of the word "cow" (as "keow"). Again, though, I'd say this features is somewhat more variable in New England than in Canada.

My mother occasionally pronounces "out", "about" and "house" in the Canadian manner despite the fact that she otherwise has a completely non-regionally-inflected American accent. No one knows why she does this or where she picked it up.

<<My mother occasionally pronounces "out", "about" and "house" in the Canadian manner despite the fact that she otherwise has a completely non-regionally-inflected American accent. No one knows why she does this or where she picked it up.>>

Just curious, where are you (and your mother) from?

Nowhere -- we were both army brats and lived all over the US and in other countries. I believe she's lived in Louisiana, West Texas, Long Island, upstate New York, Germany, tidewater Virginia, California, and Georgia (if I'm not forgetting a few places!) I can add Japan and New Mexico to my list, and scratch off the first three.

One note is that in various northern American dialects, one may have various degrees of Canadian Raising outside of the full raising of both /aI/ and /aU/. For example, here in southeastern Wisconsin, the raising of /aI/ to [@I] before unvoiced consonants and also /r\/ is ubiquitous, whereas /aU/ is never raised here. Notably, there also appears to be the raising of what would be /A/ in many other NAE dialects to /@/ before clusters of /r\/ and a following unvoiced consonant, but unlike the raising of /aI/, this seems to be phonemic. If anything, the name "Canadian Raising" is a bit misleading, because it is in no fashion purely a Canadian feature, especially when you take partial Canadian Raising, like that in my own dialect, into account.

I've heard the raising of /aI/ in so many Northern speakers, that I barely notice it anymore.

Maine especially is known for its 'Canadian raising', and so are some other US regions in the northeast especially. (Vermont especially, but rural Conneticut wouldn't surprise me).

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about wrt the bet/bat thing. Canadians merge bot and bat (e.g. hockey and hacky are homonyms in many parts of Canada), but I don't know of any Canadian dialect that would merge bet and bat.

I also don't know what you mean about cat becoming /kat/ - I've never heard any Canadian say that. I have only ever heard cat pronounced /kæt/ anywhere in Canada. Pronouncing 'cat' as /kat/ seems very Californian to me.

<<Maine especially is known for its 'Canadian raising', and so are some other US regions in the northeast especially. (Vermont especially, but rural Conneticut wouldn't surprise me).

I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about wrt the bet/bat thing. Canadians merge bot and bat (e.g. hockey and hacky are homonyms in many parts of Canada), but I don't know of any Canadian dialect that would merge bet and bat.

I also don't know what you mean about cat becoming /kat/ - I've never heard any Canadian say that. I have only ever heard cat pronounced /kæt/ anywhere in Canada. Pronouncing 'cat' as /kat/ seems very Californian to me.>>

There actually is a Canadian Shift going on right now linguists have been noticing, and one of the features is /æ/ --> /a/, a parallel in that phoneme with the California Shift. I don't know how widespread it is, and the Canadians I know such as my relatives in BC don't seem to have this shift, so it may be a feature of a certain metropolitan area or areas. I vaguely remember it was being noticed in Toronto amongst younger speakers. I know songs aren't always the best example of real-life speech, but they gotta count for something, and I've noticed Avril Lavigne often seems to have /æ/ instead of traditional /E/ in words like "bet." At first I thought she was trying to copy a California accent or something but then I read about the separate shift going on in Canada as well. For one example, if you can, listen to her "My Happy Ending" on the line "you were everything, everything, that I wanted" and she has a decided /æ/ as the first vowel in "everything."

Also, I wasn't aware of any "hockey/hacky" merger in Canada, tho I could be wrong. I know in the US some speakers' "hockey" (with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) may sound like another American's "hacky," but they're still not merged.

<<Also, I wasn't aware of any "hockey/hacky" merger in Canada, tho I could be wrong. I know in the US some speakers' "hockey" (with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) may sound like another American's "hacky," but they're still not merged.>>

Kirk,

For people with the Northern Cities Vowel Shift (as I've read), ''cot'' is pronounced /kat/ (which is somewhere in between the pronunciation of other American's ''cot'' /kAt/ and ''cat'' /k{t/), while ''caught'' is pronounced /kAt/.

I think the shift goes like this:

/O/ becomes /A/ - caught = /kAt/

/A/ becomes /a/ cot = /kat/

Plus some other vowels shift as well that I haven't mentioned.

The hockey/hacky thing might exist in some Canadian dialects, but I've always thought of that as being a more Northern US thing.

Maine is probably the most "Canadian raised" of any US State. From talking to young people in Augusta, Maine, I'd say their accent is nearly indistinguishable from the Atlantic Provinces of Canada.

There's no hockey/hacky merger anywhere in North America.

In the Northern Cities Shift, ''hockey'' is /haki/ and ''hacky'' is more like /he@ki/.

Bump.