1 Answers
Canadian raising is an allophonic rule of phonology in many varieties of North American English that changes the pronunciation of diphthongs with open-vowel starting points. Most commonly, the shift affects /aɪ/ or /aʊ/ , or both, when they are pronounced before voiceless consonants. In North American English, /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ usually begin in an open vowel , but through raising they shift to , or. Canadian English often has raising in words with both /aɪ/ and /aʊ/ , while a number of American English dialects have this feature in /aɪ/ but not /aʊ/.
In the U.S., aboot , an exaggerated version of the raised pronunciation of about , is a stereotype of Canadian English.
Although the symbol ⟨ʌ⟩ is defined as an open-mid back unrounded vowel in the International Phonetic Alphabet, ⟨ʌɪ⟩ or ⟨ʌʊ⟩ may signify any raised vowel that contrasts with unraised /aɪ/ or /aʊ/, when the exact quality of the raised vowel is not important in the given context.