I had a friend in Canada who did his doctoral thesis on differences in pronunciation between Canada and the U.S. He said that Canadians generally touch the tip of their tongue to the roof of the mouth farther back than Americans do when making the 'ou' sound (try saying 'about' both ways).
My personal theory is that this is so because Canada is on average a lot colder than the U.S. and that we Canadians don't want to get frostbite every time we say 'aboot'.
This would explain why Minnesotans also say 'aboot'.
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I had a friend in Canada who did his doctoral thesis on differences in pronunciation between Canada and the U.S. He said that Canadians generally touch the tip of their tongue to the roof of the mouth farther back than Americans do when making the 'ou' sound (try saying 'about' both ways). My personal theory is that this is so because Canada is on average a lot colder than the U.S. and that we Canadians don't want to get frostbite every time we say 'aboot'. This would explain why Minnesotans also say 'aboot'.