The truth about "aboot"

I originally posted this as a reply in another thread, but I'm reposting in it's own thread so it has a better chance of reaching more people.

The whole "about/aboot" confusion arises from a pronunciation phenomenon called "Canadian raising". If you want to learn more about it, those are the magic word to plug into Google.

Canadians can hear that most Americans say "about" using the same vowel sound as in the word "loud", but we use a different vowel sound that many Americans mistake as the vowel sound in "lewd" or "loot". The "typical" Canadian pronunciation of the vowel sound in "about" is a sound that does not match either the vowel sound in "loud" or the vowel sound in "lewd". There's a transitional vowel sound that occurs in typical Canadian speech (from a class of vowel sounds linguists call "diphthongs") that is distinct from both "loud" and "lewd".

But the actual vowel sound most Canadians use in "about" doesn't occur at all in the regional accents in most parts of the USA (or the "General American" accent). Because of this, and how language learning works, people raised in most parts of the USA lose the ability to hear the difference between what Canadians *actually* say, and "aboot". It's similar to the phenomenon where Japanese raised without exposure to English sounds have trouble distinguishing "r" and "l" sounds, and will hear "lamp" and "ramp" as the same word.

What a Canadian says:
"I didn't say 'aboot', I said 'about'"
What many Americans hear:
"I didn't say 'aboot', I said 'aboot'"

What an American says:
"I didn't say 'ramp', I said 'lamp'"
What many Japanese hear:
"I didn't say 'ramp', I said 'ramp'"

The whole issue gets further confused because there are a few regional accents spoken by a small number of Canadians where the pronunciation really *is* pretty much "aboot", and most Canadians hear that regional variant as different from their own pronunciation. Many Canadians who aren't aware of what I explained above mistakenly believe that Americans making jokes about "aboot" are making generalizations based on the uncommon regional "aboot" pronunciation.