Are Canadianisms like "aboat" equally common on the American side of the border, adjacent to it?

Question

Most Canadians live close the the border. If you cross to the American side of border, in a rural area, do Canadianisms (1) like "aboat" (2) suddenly become much less common?

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Since this created controversy, allow me to quote the dictionaries:

(1)

Canadianism

noun

1. a word, expression, or other language feature that is characteristically Canadian.
2. the state of being Canadian, or the character and spirit characteristic of Canadians.

(2)

• https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/aboat "This spelling has been used to represent Canadian raising"
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboot
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aboat

Answer 1

No, Canadian pronunciations of "about" (approximated as "aboat/aboot", IPA [ə.ˈbʌʊt] or [ə.ˈbɛʊt] in Southern Ontario) are not equally common on the American side of the border, adjacent to it.

Timothy Vance wrote about this question back in 1987 in his article "Canadian Raising" in Some Dialects of the Northern United States, where he looked at both /aɪ/ raised to [ʌɪ] (as in Canadian pronunciations of "knife") and /aʊ/ raised to [ʌʊ] (as in Canadian pronunciations of "about"). He found the latter to be rarer - though not absent - on the American side of the border.

As a Canadian linguist married to a woman from rural Western New York, I can confirm that this observation still holds true anecdotally in 2022. My wife's pronunciation and her family's pronunciation of "knife" are similar to mine, while their pronunciation of "about" is not. They're also very aware of this difference, even as non-linguists.

By the way, we have an authoritative resource on Canadianisms called A Dictionary of Canadianisms on Historical Principles. It covers words, expressions, and meanings characteristic of Canadian English.

Answer 2

When I was in Minnesota I heard people saying what I thought was 'aboot', and a fellow outsider (from New York) told me it was the Yooper (UP - Upper Pensinsula) accent. Years later, I heard an approximation of it in a film, Fargo, set in Minnesota.

Answer 3

Accent regions don't always conform with political borders. In the case of the so called "Canadian raising", there's some accents with it in the United States of America, most notably in the upper Midwest and parts of New England. Some upper Midwest and Canadian accents are so similar, that if you crossed a non-patrolled part of the border between the two countries, you would hardly be able to tell whether you were in the US or Canada just by hearing people talk, the main exception might be if they're discussing the weather, how far they live from where they are, etc (the Canadians will generally express those measurements in metric rather than imperial).

Outside the Midwest and New England, a few southern American accents also have the Canadian raising, at least in terms of the " ou" dipthong, the most notable of which is the "Tidewater" accent of Virginia.