Talk:Canadian raising/Archive 1

No, really: Um, what?

Listen. All you studied linguists, take a step back. Read the first three paragraphs of this article as if you weren't someone with back-of-thy-hand knowledge of the IPA. Now, read them again, but pretend you don't have strong feelings about defending the use of the IPA despite its utter and complete opacity to 95% of the literate public. Under those constraints, "Um, what?" becomes a perfect description of what is supposed to be an accessible introduction to an interesting concept.

"Canadian rising" is a phenomenon a lot of us want to understand; making it literally Greek to us is not the job of paragraph #1.

So stop the circle-jerk.Eunomiac (talk) 04:23, 11 July 2014 (UTC)

Rewrote a bit. If you ever come back, let me know if the article is more understandable now. — Eru·tuon 00:24, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

IPA is important and there is no other decent way to show pronunciation in written text. Using words to show pronunciation is wrong since nobody would know which accent is meant and even people in one area can talk differently. Canadian raising is not meant to be an introductory topic. And something like IPA can't be repeated in every article talking about pronunciation, so you should read the article on IPA and not crying about it not being explained here. IPA is not only for people studying linguistics, it is fundamental in foreign language acquisition as well. Basically, everyone but English-speaking people, who have no need for a second language because they already grew up with the "correct" language, have encountered the system. --94.217.98.216 (talk) 19:49, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

This user is not going to come back anytime soon. His last contribution is reported to be in July. I don't think we should waste our time on explaining our position to this user.LakeKayak (talk) 20:00, 19 March 2017 (UTC)

Um... what?

I was born in Canada and lived here for 20 years, half of those years in a different province and I have never once heard anyone pronounce "about" any differently than any American. This article should be deleted. It is 100% nonsense.--70.65.172.41 (talk) 14:50, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

Totally agree. I've lived in Canada my entire life (over 50 years) and find nearly all (all?) of these so-called differences in the way Canadians pronounce certain words to be dead wrong.68.146.28.190 (talk) 03:02, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

Pack it up, linguists. These two anons think you're wrong because reasons. 69.171.139.49 (talk) 02:55, 16 February 2013 (UTC)

The article is nonsense though. "Bag" and "beg" are not pronounced the same anywhere in Canada. Even where the vowel sound is similar, "beg" is a short word like "puck", while "bag" is a long word like "last". The two "anons" above are correct. (Often, people who have lives are too busy to sign in, but choose to contribute valid comments anyway.) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.147.122.14 (talk) 11:57, 11 February 2014 (UTC)

Who says that 'bag' and 'beg' are pronounced the same in Canada? This would be a manifestation of the met-mat merger, absent from Canadian English. And no, the 'anons' are not correct. Plus, they haven't provided a single source to back up what they said. — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 16:18, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

The vowels of bag and beg are often similar in Upper Midwest American English, but because of raising or diphthongization of some vowels before voiced velars, not a general merger of the vowels of mat and met. According to the article on the dialect, this feature also occurs in Canadian English. (The article says the change only affects /æ/, but I think it affects /ɛ/ too.) — Eru·tuon 22:55, 25 November 2014 (UTC)

Ok, thanks — Peter238 (v̥ɪˑzɪʔ mɑˑɪ̯ tˢʰoˑk̚ pʰɛˑɪ̯d̥ʒ̊) 08:17, 26 November 2014 (UTC)

Umm I pronounce "beg" and "bag" the same. I am from southern Ontario and am 25 years old. It's called "prevelar raising" and it is found in in Canadian English. It may not be as common as raising of "ou" but it certainly is spoken by a lot of Canadians including myself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.224.205.57 (talk) 23:52, 23 February 2015 (UTC)

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