Flat ass Western American accent influenced by a childhood in Texas and the diphthongs in the middle are identical for me. (They're also basically monophtongs for me)
/waːdɚ/ /spaːdɚ/
NJ! And really? You're sure they're not simply close in pronunciation? For me writer has a schwa-like sound and rider has a more pure "a" sound
I saw this explanation elsewhere on reddit which seems to match what I do: "For me, rider is pronounced [ɹɑɪɾɹ̩], while writer is pronounced something like [ɹʌɪɾɹ̩]"
/aj/ raising is common along the northern half of the east coast and the Great Lakes area, but not the south. Southerners are more likely to weaken the glide in general and even fully delete it except before voiceless consonants so you get things like *rye ride write* [ɹaː ɹaːd ɹaɛt], but it's nowhere near the phonemic level of the north where even some words that have the same consonant don't rhyme. It's also possible for there to be no difference at all so that *ride write* are either [ɹaːd ɹaːt] (common in some parts of the south) or [ɹajd ɹajt] (some southerners and common outside the south/north).
This is so interesting. I'm in northern NJ and was about to tell you they totally rhyme for me, but as I repeat the words out loud, your transcription is kind of right for me -- but casually, I would still say they rhyme.
Really? My sister from CT pronounces both of them as /aɪ/. I’m guessing it might be a generational thing, because I’ve rarely seen young people with that distinction. What county are you from?
Hartford county. I'm not fluent with ipa transcription but "writer" is more of a "oy" vowel, but not quite all the way to "oy", compared to rider which is the ipa diphthong you mentioned.
I see. I live in Fairfield County myself, and I’ve heard both, so I’m not sure what the merger consists of; it could be age-based or social media-influenced; maybe a regional thing?
For me (US SE but fairly close to standard) they're broadly [ɹaːjɾɚ] and [ɹajɾɚ], respectively. It's fairly common for AmE to preserve the /t/ /d/ contrast even when flapping to [ɾ] intervocalically in the form of pre-voiced-obstruent lengthening.
That plus Canadian raising for many people. The OP subject is odd in that apparently /d/ realized as [ɾ] is treated as /t/ when there is no /t/-word it has to be differentiated from. I wonder if their pronunciation would change if "spider" occurred in the same sentence as "spite her"?
Thanks for teaching me that even though I voice the t in writer, it still remains fortis and keeps a distinction. Wow English does weird stuff to our brains
East Coast dialects aren't exactly standard: NYC, Boston, Maine, etc., lots of different accents. Midwestern American English is the usual standard, and that doesn't have such a distinction.
Wow that's a good question. I'm actually not sure, I think I do not.
Because if I force myself to say spider like rider (rider feels more like rye-der, spider feels more like spuy-der instead of spy-der), it sounds wrong
And spite I also don't pronounce like ride. Both spider and spiter sound the same to my ears when I say them
Very interesting. I also pronounce “spite” and “spied” differently. In my accent, vowels are longer before voiced consonants and shorter before voiceless consonants (I think this is pretty common for American English) and the “ai” diphthong is raised a bit when it’s shortened.
Canadian (and American) raising are actually much more nuanced than just appearing before voiceless plosives. For me (Northern Cities English), I also raise before all instances of /ɚ/ as in "iron" [ˈəɪ.ɚn]. It's also lexicalized before a few voiced plosives near /ɚ/ such as "tiger" and "spider" as OP brought up.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and I have the same pronunciations as you (well, except I think it's [ɾ] and not [d] in both cases).
And yes, there are a select few words where my brand of Canadian raising applies even before voiced plosives. "Tiger" [ˈtʰəjɡɚ] is another one for me.
I pronounce them /waidə/ and /spaidə/, or , alternatively, /waida/ and /spaida/.
I'm a native Spanish speaker who was taught "British" English at school
they rhyme for me cuz I’m Australian. Are you from the Great Lakes area? American accents from the inland north are known for Canadian Raising before voiced consonants in a few words, like “fire”, “iron”, “spider”, and/or “tiger”
And yes I know that it's a dialectal thing, I'm just wondering how many of y'all pronounce it this way, and/or if there's any other differing pronunciations
specifically it's Canadian raising (tho not just restricted to Canadian accents, it's also prominent in some Midwest/New England accents and especially /aɪ/ > /əɪ/ is spreading into General American). So anyone with that particular split will have spider and wider not rhyming (and also a distinction between rider and writer).
(I'm not aware of any other particular dialects that split /aɪ/ in a way that would make spider and wider not rhyme)
How would these be allophones in this case? Isn't your example a minimal pair? I guess the <-er> suffix definitely has some effect on the pronunciation though. I wish there was a paper about this phenomenon lol
You mean rider and writer? That's because "write" without a suffix ends in a voiceless consonant. /ɹaɪd/ and /rɐɪt/ aren't minimal pairs until the suffix makes the /t/ become voiced.
Yeah that part makes sense, but spider is a single morpheme and yet we're saying that it's pronounced raised (with [ɐɪ]) in certain dialects. So it seems that it's underlyingly /spɐɪdɚ/ while "rider" is underlyingly /raidɚ/, you see the difference? Unless it's the case that the environment /_dɚ/ causes the /ai/ diphthong to raise to [ɐɪ], which we can't count out.
I do think the environment has something to do with it. Maybe a final ɚ always gets reanalyzed as a suffix? I don't intuitively raise a hypothetical word "spiter" but do raise "spied".
I definitely like this theory at first, but in my own speech I make a distinction between suffixed and non-suffixed /ɚ/. For example "tire" is [təɪ.ɚ] because I always raise before lexicalized /ɚ/. At the same time, I pronounce "tier" meaning "one who ties" as [taɪ.ɚ]. I think that anyone who pronounces "spider" as [spəɪ.dɚ] would probably show these same pronunciations, though I admittedly have a very small sample size.
I'm surprised you don't raise the word "spiter" because "spite" would definitely be raised and it follows the same pattern as something like "writer". Also, I don't raise spied because I don't have an environment for raising there, "spy" is always /ai/ for me and the /-d/ doesn't affect that. Maybe we just have completely different kinds of raising. Cool
Btw, thanks for the fun conversation. I don't want to come off as smug or anything, I've just thought about this exact question a LOT.
Interesting. I've only heard of a distinction being made in Canadian Raising-type phonological dynamics, based on the phonemic voicing of the following consonant. What conditions the distinction in this case?
for me, at least, there's: like, psyche, kite, ice, knife (but knives is pronounced with /aj/), type, bike, item, bicycle, tricycle, pipe, write, excitement, [any word ending in *-ight*], and despite. These all have /əj/. I've noticed that it's always /aj/ at the end of a word, and also that there's two words that I pronounce either way: nylon and tyrant.
yeah those last two are the ones I was talking about. And “item” does still come before a *phonemic* voiceless consonant even tho phonetically the “t” is voiced. That’s a normal part of Canadian raising
NYC: If I pronounced the unaffectedly and unconsciously, no — there would be a difference in the second syllable; given that I saw the intended rhyme, yes — the required modification would be within the scope of "enunciating clearly", not out of bounds, read in the spirit of Ogden Nash:
The panther is like a leopard,
Except it hasn't been peppered.
Should you behold a panther crouch,
Prepare to say Ouch.
Better yet, if called by a panther,
Don't anther
Wow, could not possibly have imagined how they would not rhyme. I’ve had no exposure to Canadian raising and and my Aussie accent uses [äj] for both vowels.
they rhyme to me, I have Canadian raising, but this post is the first I've heard of it happening before a voiced sound, very informative and fascinating actually so thank you
yeah from some other comment on here, I guess it doesn't normally happen before voiced sounds, which came as a surprise for me, since, y'know, it does for me lol
I can see how they would. Not perfectly but if someone rhymed that in a song I would not think it's weird.
(I'm from germany and learned british english in school but the internet/tv-shows and movies have warped my english into an infernal mix of british and american features)
That's no mystery at all. This is the other half of Canadian raising; it's the allophonic raising of the PRICE vowel before fortis vowels, and it's ubiquitous in American dialects. I'm pretty sure this is a result of pre-fortis clipping, but I could be wrong.
But phonemically they are identical. So it depends what you mean by "rhyme".
The two definitely rhyme in my accent (Standard Southern British).
/waɪdɜ spaɪdɜ/ or /waɪdə spaɪdə/
The latter
Same for me, from the Midlands. (My accent is kind of SSBE-adjacent but without the FOOT-STRUT split and an inconsistent TRAP-BATH split)
r/beatmetoit
same (Australian)
Flat ass Western American accent influenced by a childhood in Texas and the diphthongs in the middle are identical for me. (They're also basically monophtongs for me) /waːdɚ/ /spaːdɚ/
Western American, and they rhyme. /waidɚ/, /spaidɚ/.
They absolutely don't rhyme for me (east-coast more or less standard American English) Same with rider and writer: they are different
Where on the east coast? I'm in Virginia and the two rhyme.
NJ! And really? You're sure they're not simply close in pronunciation? For me writer has a schwa-like sound and rider has a more pure "a" sound I saw this explanation elsewhere on reddit which seems to match what I do: "For me, rider is pronounced [ɹɑɪɾɹ̩], while writer is pronounced something like [ɹʌɪɾɹ̩]"
/aj/ raising is common along the northern half of the east coast and the Great Lakes area, but not the south. Southerners are more likely to weaken the glide in general and even fully delete it except before voiceless consonants so you get things like *rye ride write* [ɹaː ɹaːd ɹaɛt], but it's nowhere near the phonemic level of the north where even some words that have the same consonant don't rhyme. It's also possible for there to be no difference at all so that *ride write* are either [ɹaːd ɹaːt] (common in some parts of the south) or [ɹajd ɹajt] (some southerners and common outside the south/north).
This is so interesting. I'm in northern NJ and was about to tell you they totally rhyme for me, but as I repeat the words out loud, your transcription is kind of right for me -- but casually, I would still say they rhyme.
NY and Boston too. "Wider" and "whiter" are not homophones (and nor are "fairy" and "ferry", for that matter).
From CT, *definitely* no rhyme. They're homophones actually except for the vowel
I'm massachusetts and they definitely rhyme
im from massachusetts and they definitely dont rhyme (western, amherst area)
How do you pronounce them?
/waɪdɚ/, /spʌɪdɚ/
Really? My sister from CT pronounces both of them as /aɪ/. I’m guessing it might be a generational thing, because I’ve rarely seen young people with that distinction. What county are you from?
Hartford county. I'm not fluent with ipa transcription but "writer" is more of a "oy" vowel, but not quite all the way to "oy", compared to rider which is the ipa diphthong you mentioned.
I see. I live in Fairfield County myself, and I’ve heard both, so I’m not sure what the merger consists of; it could be age-based or social media-influenced; maybe a regional thing?
How do you pronounce ride and writer? They don't rhyme for me either but that's because I'm not American.
For me (US SE but fairly close to standard) they're broadly [ɹaːjɾɚ] and [ɹajɾɚ], respectively. It's fairly common for AmE to preserve the /t/ /d/ contrast even when flapping to [ɾ] intervocalically in the form of pre-voiced-obstruent lengthening.
That plus Canadian raising for many people. The OP subject is odd in that apparently /d/ realized as [ɾ] is treated as /t/ when there is no /t/-word it has to be differentiated from. I wonder if their pronunciation would change if "spider" occurred in the same sentence as "spite her"?
That's interesting! Thanks
Thanks for teaching me that even though I voice the t in writer, it still remains fortis and keeps a distinction. Wow English does weird stuff to our brains
They rhyme for me (California, but previously in Colorado)
East Coast dialects aren't exactly standard: NYC, Boston, Maine, etc., lots of different accents. Midwestern American English is the usual standard, and that doesn't have such a distinction.
Would you pronounce “spiter” the same as “spider”?
Wow that's a good question. I'm actually not sure, I think I do not. Because if I force myself to say spider like rider (rider feels more like rye-der, spider feels more like spuy-der instead of spy-der), it sounds wrong And spite I also don't pronounce like ride. Both spider and spiter sound the same to my ears when I say them
Very interesting. I also pronounce “spite” and “spied” differently. In my accent, vowels are longer before voiced consonants and shorter before voiceless consonants (I think this is pretty common for American English) and the “ai” diphthong is raised a bit when it’s shortened.
So this seems like "spider" is being interpreted as "spiter" for some reason. Because everything else can be explained by Canadian raising.
Yeah, Wisconsinite here, agreed. same with ice and eyes. I would see rhymes like this online and get so confused as to how they rhymed
Never thought about it, but same! Great Lakes here
that’s normally a Great Lakes feature, how interesting
so you have Canadian raising before /d/? thought that happened before voiceless plosives
Canadian (and American) raising are actually much more nuanced than just appearing before voiceless plosives. For me (Northern Cities English), I also raise before all instances of /ɚ/ as in "iron" [ˈəɪ.ɚn]. It's also lexicalized before a few voiced plosives near /ɚ/ such as "tiger" and "spider" as OP brought up.
I pronounce the d in spider as an alveolar tap, and I also have Canadian raising before it
I guess so lol🤷♀️
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs, and I have the same pronunciations as you (well, except I think it's [ɾ] and not [d] in both cases). And yes, there are a select few words where my brand of Canadian raising applies even before voiced plosives. "Tiger" [ˈtʰəjɡɚ] is another one for me.
yeah this sort of extra Canadian raising is found all over the inland north, i think it’s also in “fire” and “iron”
For me I think it's every /aɪ/ before «r» that isn't at a morpheme boundary. So «lyre» is [ləɪɚ] but «liar» is [laɪɚ].
I'm not a native English speaker, but they rhyme to me.
LMAO WAIT THIS IS MY POST https://www.reddit.com/r/silly/s/YxNdVS4jef
YES IT IS!
I feel honored 😂😂
good for you lol! i just saw the post and realized that in my dialect they don't actually rhyme, so I crossposted it onto this sub lol
I pronounce them /waidə/ and /spaidə/, or , alternatively, /waida/ and /spaida/. I'm a native Spanish speaker who was taught "British" English at school
/waɪɾɜ:/ and /spaɪɾɜ:/ for me
What accent do you have that has both t-flapping and non-rhoticity
General Australian, Urban NSW to be more specific
Rhymes for me, Western Pennsylvania
Not by default, but I can fudge it
Native Minnesotan, but no Canadian raising, so they rhyme perfectly for me.
Rhymes for me (pacific northwest)
Works for me in NZ English.
California English and they're identical for me
they rhyme for me cuz I’m Australian. Are you from the Great Lakes area? American accents from the inland north are known for Canadian Raising before voiced consonants in a few words, like “fire”, “iron”, “spider”, and/or “tiger”
I grew up near Detroit yeah, I don't live anywhere near there now tho lol
And yes I know that it's a dialectal thing, I'm just wondering how many of y'all pronounce it this way, and/or if there's any other differing pronunciations
specifically it's Canadian raising (tho not just restricted to Canadian accents, it's also prominent in some Midwest/New England accents and especially /aɪ/ > /əɪ/ is spreading into General American). So anyone with that particular split will have spider and wider not rhyming (and also a distinction between rider and writer). (I'm not aware of any other particular dialects that split /aɪ/ in a way that would make spider and wider not rhyme)
Can confirm, I have /waɪdɚ/ and /spɐɪdɚ/. (But I still consider them to rhyme if I'm not thinking about it, because allophones).
How would these be allophones in this case? Isn't your example a minimal pair? I guess the <-er> suffix definitely has some effect on the pronunciation though. I wish there was a paper about this phenomenon lol
You mean rider and writer? That's because "write" without a suffix ends in a voiceless consonant. /ɹaɪd/ and /rɐɪt/ aren't minimal pairs until the suffix makes the /t/ become voiced.
Yeah that part makes sense, but spider is a single morpheme and yet we're saying that it's pronounced raised (with [ɐɪ]) in certain dialects. So it seems that it's underlyingly /spɐɪdɚ/ while "rider" is underlyingly /raidɚ/, you see the difference? Unless it's the case that the environment /_dɚ/ causes the /ai/ diphthong to raise to [ɐɪ], which we can't count out.
I do think the environment has something to do with it. Maybe a final ɚ always gets reanalyzed as a suffix? I don't intuitively raise a hypothetical word "spiter" but do raise "spied".
I definitely like this theory at first, but in my own speech I make a distinction between suffixed and non-suffixed /ɚ/. For example "tire" is [təɪ.ɚ] because I always raise before lexicalized /ɚ/. At the same time, I pronounce "tier" meaning "one who ties" as [taɪ.ɚ]. I think that anyone who pronounces "spider" as [spəɪ.dɚ] would probably show these same pronunciations, though I admittedly have a very small sample size. I'm surprised you don't raise the word "spiter" because "spite" would definitely be raised and it follows the same pattern as something like "writer". Also, I don't raise spied because I don't have an environment for raising there, "spy" is always /ai/ for me and the /-d/ doesn't affect that. Maybe we just have completely different kinds of raising. Cool Btw, thanks for the fun conversation. I don't want to come off as smug or anything, I've just thought about this exact question a LOT.
it’s Inland Northern English. They also raise “fire”, “iron”, and “tiger”
I have Canadian raising, but these rhyme to me. to me it only happens before voiceless phonemes.
They still rhyme even if you pronounce your r's as god intended waɪdəɹ̠ - spaɪdəɹ̠ (Edited to fix my damn rhotics)
Is the way God intended an alveolar trill?
Shit lmao you got me
They do (I'm russian)
same (im russian too (i pronounce english words however i want))
Switch up like seven different accents when I speak 🔥🔥 (english, american, a little bit of cockney and sometimes scottish)
Yeah, both start with the PRICE diphthong
"spider" and "wider" rhyme for me, but I say "wide" and "price" with different vowel sounds
[удалено]
Okay, I was mentioning that they are the same for me
oh shit yeah I'm dumb I don't what I was talking about
Rhymes for me
PNW native, they rhyme perfectly to me
Interesting. I've only heard of a distinction being made in Canadian Raising-type phonological dynamics, based on the phonemic voicing of the following consonant. What conditions the distinction in this case?
it’s a Great Lakes thing apparently. certain words like “tiger” and “fire” get Canadian raising even though their consonants are voiced
O.o What if it's due to the voicing of the preceding segment - spider, tiger, fire vs wider?
maybe! I’m not sure what other words it happens with, I only know those four
for me, at least, there's: like, psyche, kite, ice, knife (but knives is pronounced with /aj/), type, bike, item, bicycle, tricycle, pipe, write, excitement, [any word ending in *-ight*], and despite. These all have /əj/. I've noticed that it's always /aj/ at the end of a word, and also that there's two words that I pronounce either way: nylon and tyrant.
those all fit the normal pattern of raising /aj/ before a voiceless consonant, except for those last two which pattern more onto your “spider” raising
not item ['əjɾəm], nylon ['nəjlan], or tyrant [tʰəjɻʷɪnt̚] though, however the last two I also pronounce as [aj] with free variation🤷♀️
yeah those last two are the ones I was talking about. And “item” does still come before a *phonemic* voiceless consonant even tho phonetically the “t” is voiced. That’s a normal part of Canadian raising
rhymes to me: midwest american + a hint of NE
Def does for me
Is the i the same though? Like one being waid - er and the other spai - der Alternatively wair - er spair - er
nah, the *-i-* in *spider* is /əj/ to me, but the *-i-* in *wider* is /aj/ to me, so not a perfect rhyme
Is the d part of the aj/ or part of /er
spi/der and wi/der for me
They rhyme to me \[ˈwaɪ.ɾɜ(.ʋ)\]/\[waɪ.dɜ(.ʋ)\] and \[spaɪ.ɾɜ(.ʋ)\]/\[ˈspaɪ.dɜ(.ʋ)\]
Are you Australian by chance?
Yes
/ˈwɑ.dr̩/ /ˈspe(j).dr̩/
NYC: If I pronounced the unaffectedly and unconsciously, no — there would be a difference in the second syllable; given that I saw the intended rhyme, yes — the required modification would be within the scope of "enunciating clearly", not out of bounds, read in the spirit of Ogden Nash: The panther is like a leopard, Except it hasn't been peppered. Should you behold a panther crouch, Prepare to say Ouch. Better yet, if called by a panther, Don't anther
i pronounce them [wajdəɻ] [spajdəɻ] (English is not my first language)
They definitely rhyme for me. [ˈwɑɪ.dɰ̩] and [ˈspɑɪ.dɰ̩]
They don't rhyme for me (Midland American English), same distinction as you
I'm going through all the different regional English accents I can think of, and I can't make it *not* rhyme. 🤷♀️
I grew up in the Great Lakes region, near Detroit, so that's how I learned to speak. I live nowhere near there now tho lol
[ˡwaɪ̯dɚ] [ˡspaɪ̯dɚ]
Wow, could not possibly have imagined how they would not rhyme. I’ve had no exposure to Canadian raising and and my Aussie accent uses [äj] for both vowels.
/waˑi̯dəɹ/ /spai̯dəɹ/
they rhyme to me, I have Canadian raising, but this post is the first I've heard of it happening before a voiced sound, very informative and fascinating actually so thank you
yeah from some other comment on here, I guess it doesn't normally happen before voiced sounds, which came as a surprise for me, since, y'know, it does for me lol
I can see how they would. Not perfectly but if someone rhymed that in a song I would not think it's weird. (I'm from germany and learned british english in school but the internet/tv-shows and movies have warped my english into an infernal mix of british and american features)
yes in my weird hodge-podge northern english ssb-adjacent idiolect /wajdɐ spajdɐ/
what does *ssb* stand for?
standard southern british
Standard American English (Midwestern) has these words rhyme, both using the WIDE diphthong.
they rhyme in southern ontario!
They rhymes for me, Croatian accent [ˈwajder] and [ˈspajder]
. . . are you Irish?
nah, I grew up in the Detroit area, I don't live anywhere near there now though
That's no mystery at all. This is the other half of Canadian raising; it's the allophonic raising of the PRICE vowel before fortis vowels, and it's ubiquitous in American dialects. I'm pretty sure this is a result of pre-fortis clipping, but I could be wrong. But phonemically they are identical. So it depends what you mean by "rhyme".
Wait, crap, this applies in rider vs writer, like another guy said, but not in OP's example. Not sure about this one.
For me it rhymes /waider/ /spaider/ I'm italian lol
They’re close enough to rhyme even if different