Do you say “writer” and “rider” differently?
During a class today, I noticed that I said the words “writer” and “rider” differently! I’ve never noticed that distinction before and decided to do some research. As a note, I have a fairly standard General American Accent. Here’s what I found out.
There is something called Canadian Rising which can be found replacing the diphthong /aɪ̆/ with /ʌɪ̆/. The closest thing there is to a rule about replacement is when the sound appears before a voiceless consonant in the “proper” pronunciation. In things like “<em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">writer</em>”<em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);"> </em>Americans turn the voiceless consonant into a tapped, voiced ‘D’ sound, but keep the new diphthong. As with every rule in English though, there are probably more exceptions that “obedient cases”.
Some examples are: <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">cider</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">fighter</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">cyber</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">high</em> school, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">ice</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">spider</em>
These have also created several minimal pairs that are very difficult to distinguish between for non native speakers, such as: <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">writer</em> and <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">rider</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">ice</em> <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">cream</em> and <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I scream</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">sighted</em> and <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">sided</em>, <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">whiter</em> and <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">wider</em>.
There is also a distinction between “<em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">I was in high school when that happened”</em> and <em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">“The school at the top of the tower is called a high school”</em> (a school that is high up). That is because “<em style="background-color: transparent; color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">high school</em>” is a compound noun and sort of functions as a single word.
I’m not Canadian, but a similar effect can be seen with /ʌʊ̆/ replacing /aʊ̆/ or /oʊ̆/. This would be the reason Canadians tend to say “out” and “house” differently than speakers from the United States.
Do you say these words differently as a native speaker? Where is your accent from?
Do you say these differently as a English Language Learner? If you do, why?
