Grammar girl here, this week guest rider Gretchen McCulloch is going to help us

understand what it is that makes the Canadian accent sound the way it does.

What's the difference between the pronunciation of house is in a big house and

house as in a housed the visitors? Despite the fact that they're spelled the same

way, the noun house is pronounced with an S while the verb house is pronounced

with a Z. For English speakers from most countries the differences stop

there, but for Canadians and for certain Americans especially from more

northern states there's also a difference in the vowel or more accurately the

diphthong. A diphthong is a combination of two vowel sounds. For the out dip

thong in the word how you start with the A in law and gradually move your tongue

toward the U in blue that is a bit higher and toward the back of your mouth

while at the same time your lips get rounder. Try it. Oh, oh, oh. If you speed it up

you get the diphthong in how. For people who pronounce house and how's with

the same diphthong that how is the diphthong they're using, but for people who

pronounce them differently there's a second diphthong. This one starts with the

vowel in cut and moves toward the same U in blue, but notice how if you switch

back and forth between the vowels in law and cut, the only thing that really

changes is that your tongue moves a little bit higher. So if you go from the cut

vowel to the blue vowel, oh, oh, oh, and speed it up a little you get a dipthong

that's pretty close to what Canadians pronounce in house, the noun. And I

probably have that pronunciation a little bit off, but I did grow up in Seattle,

so I've heard it. Because the difference between the two dipthongs is whether

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