Canadian English

1.    Canadian English (excluding Newfoundland and the francophone areas) is very similar to General American English, but varies in the pronunciation of two or three vowel sounds.

2.    Canadians tend to pronounce the ‘o’ as an open o / ɔ / before ‘p, b, t, d, ck, ft, l, m, n, s, th, instead of script a / ɑ /  or ah sound.  e.g. opt, bob, pot, God, modern, lock, soft, dollar, mom, on, possible, moth

 3.    Canadians pronounce these word pairs alike: caught /cot,  dock/ chalk,  not / naught,  route /root.  This is referred to as the Canadian low back vowel merger.

 4.    Canadians tend to pronounce the ‘or’ as /our /  instead of / a: :r / or / ɔr / in words like:  cork, foreign, more, orange, poor, sorry, tomorrow.

 5.    Canadians tend to pronounce / aɔ / and / υ /  in front of voiceless consonants with the tongue noticeably raised and tensed, making the vowel sound ‘tighter’.  So, instead of pronouncing the 'ou' in words like house, mouse, shout and south as / aυ / they pronounce it as / ɔ υ / or / ʌ υ / .

  6.   Canadians tend to pronounce an 'i' that comes before a voiceless consonant as in light, quite, right and wife   as / ə ɪ / instead of / aɪ / .

  7.   Many Canadians, unlike most Americans,  prefer ‘eh’ to ‘huh’ e.g. why not, eh?