"Canadian raising" is a supposedly Canadian phenomenon that affects the pronunciation of /ai/ and /au/ before voiceless consonants, producing the famous pronunciation of "aboat" for "about". But there's a related phenomenon also called "Canadian raising" that seems to occur pretty frequently in the U.S., and makes the words "writer" and "rider" distinct -- in the pronunciation of the first vowel, not the "t" vs. "d" (respectively, something like [ɹǝɪɾɚ] and [ɹaɪːɾɚ], although that might not make much sense to non-linguists). This occurs in my (American) speech and in the speech of every single American friend I've asked -- at least to the extent I can get them to stop trying to pronounce the "t" in "writer" artificially when asking about the words. So the obvious question is -- where in the U.S. does "Canadian" raising of /ai/ *not* occur? I.e. are there places where "writer" and "rider" sound identical, and if so, where?
A few related questions/observations:
1. "Canadian raising" is supposed to affect the vowel /ai/ before voiceless but not voiced consonants. But at least in my speech "spider" rhymes with "writer", *not* with "rider". Does everyone with "Canadian raising" agree or is this regional? (I remember noticing something to this effect when I was 5 years old. Some teacher produced the riddle "Why did the fly fly? Because the spider spied (h)er" and my thought was that "spider" and "spied 'er" don't sound identical.)
2. In my speech, "high school" (9th to 12th grade secondary school) has the raised vowel of "writer" -- i.e. it sounds much like "hice school". But "high school" (literally "school that is high (in elevation, collective drug use, etc.)") has the non-raised vowel of "rider". Does everyone with "Canadian raising" have the same distinction?
3. "pilot", "pirate", "hydrogen" -- all three words can be (at least optionally) raised in my speech. Do others agree? (This suggests to me that /ai/ gets raised, or at least can get raised, in a stressed syllable any time there's not a morpheme boundary after the syllable. Hence "spider" gets raised because it's a single morpheme, but "rider" doesn't because it's formed from two morphemes "ride" + "-er".)
A few related questions/observations:
1. "Canadian raising" is supposed to affect the vowel /ai/ before voiceless but not voiced consonants. But at least in my speech "spider" rhymes with "writer", *not* with "rider". Does everyone with "Canadian raising" agree or is this regional? (I remember noticing something to this effect when I was 5 years old. Some teacher produced the riddle "Why did the fly fly? Because the spider spied (h)er" and my thought was that "spider" and "spied 'er" don't sound identical.)
2. In my speech, "high school" (9th to 12th grade secondary school) has the raised vowel of "writer" -- i.e. it sounds much like "hice school". But "high school" (literally "school that is high (in elevation, collective drug use, etc.)") has the non-raised vowel of "rider". Does everyone with "Canadian raising" have the same distinction?
3. "pilot", "pirate", "hydrogen" -- all three words can be (at least optionally) raised in my speech. Do others agree? (This suggests to me that /ai/ gets raised, or at least can get raised, in a stressed syllable any time there's not a morpheme boundary after the syllable. Hence "spider" gets raised because it's a single morpheme, but "rider" doesn't because it's formed from two morphemes "ride" + "-er".)