Wikipedia:IPA for English tells me…

^ Many speakers, for example in most of Canada, have a different vowel in price and ride. Generally, an [aɪ] is used at the ends of words and before voiced sounds, as in ride, file, fine, pie, while an [ʌɪ] is used before voiceless sounds, as in price and write. Because /t/ and /d/ are often conflated in the middle of words in these dialects, derivatives of these words, such as rider and writer, may be distinguished only by their vowel: [ˈɹʷaɪɾəɹ], [ˈɹʷʌɪɾəɹ]. However, even though the value of /aɪ/ is not predictable in some words, such as spider [ˈspʌɪɾəɹ],[citation needed] dictionaries do not generally record it, so it has not been allocated a separate transcription here.

Well there you go, I had not noticed that. Do you hear this, Dave?

This may be one of those things you need linguistic training to notice; it’s very hard for untrained speakers of a language to notice distinctions that aren’t phonemic (don’t make a difference in meaning).

I might have to ‘tube me up some Beachcombers and DeGrassi ...

This is true for me, and I think for at least many other northern US speakers. Exceptions (for me) seem to include “spider” and “cider” (but not “sider").

Isn’t this another vestige of Scottish pronunciation, like the “aboot” which almost invariably identifies a native Canadian?

lionello - 26 June 2011 09:46 PM

Isn’t this another vestige of Scottish pronunciation, like the “aboot” which almost invariably identifies a native Canadian?

Plausible. My own pronunciation certainly makes the distinctions in OP’s original post. However, I was in England for my formative years, so my accent is a bit of a mixture and not pure Scots (or pure anything else for that matter).

Isn’t this another vestige of Scottish pronunciation, like the “aboot” which almost invariably identifies a native Canadian?

Yes, it’s a component of what is known as the Canadian raising of vowel sounds, but there is a question of how much it is related to the Scottish pronunciation. Canadians raise their vowels in a lot more situations than the Scots do.

I haven’t heard this particular one, but of course that means I’ll start hearing it all over now.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWMNT5fT4K8

In this piece about the White Stripes there are, of course, plenty of examples of /ai/ before unvoiced consonants, and a couple of instances of /ai/ before voiced consonants (surprise, wide) ... I _think_ I can hear it.