Canadian Vowel Raising is a phenomenon distinct to southern Ontario dialects. In this pronunciation, diphthongs that begin with an open vowel, when pronounced in front of voiceless consonants, are raised and shifted to a more closed form.

I conducted a small project that compared the pronunciations of three residents of Southern Ontario to three U.S. residents from different parts of the country. They were tested on a randomized word list that contained word pairs which placed the relevent diphthong before voiced and voiceless consonants. Their speech was recorded and analysed in Praat to determine the formants.

The results of this study showed that the difference in pronunciation was not the vowel raising, per se, but the consistency. Canadian soeakers raised their diphthong before voiceless consonants in the overwhelming majority of cases, whereas the Americans had a fairly even mix of raised and open diphthongs.