# Changes in American English **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 9, 2009, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606 "2009-01-09T23:10:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/81 "2009-01-13T04:02:07Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > I say “Cot” and “caught” exactly the same, pronounce “Father” and “Bother” to rhyme, and do not pronounce “tar” and “tore” the same. But the vowel sounds in “tore” and “caught” are nothing alike to me. Right. This is the phenomenon **TorpedoTed** was commenting upon. > [@](#): > > Quite fascinating. How do “Tore” and “caught” sound where they have the same vowel? Wouldn’t that make “caught” sound like “Coat,” as in something you wear? No, but this is what I was talking about where speakers may conceptualize the sound in “tore” as “oh” instead of “aw”. (Some even pronounce it that way in some contexts; consider the process that turned “whore” into “ho”.) However, most Americans don’t actually pronounce “tore” using the same vowel as “coat”; consider the difference between “stow reed” and “storied”, if you can notice one in your own speech. Or, try imitating a generic non-rhotic British accent; they don’t pronounce the /r/ in “court”, but they don’t make it sound like “coat” either (neither the American nor British pronunciations of it). They use what is for them the “aw” vowel. For them, “court” and “caught” are homophonous. ---
**Author:** ![Vox\_Imperatoris](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/f9ae1b/32.png) [@Vox\_Imperatoris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vox_Imperatoris)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/82 "2009-01-13T04:09:47Z")
Wait, so where are “tore”, “tar”, and “caught” the same? I’ve never heard that. Valete, Vox Imperatoris ---
**Author:** ![TorpedoTed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/da6949/32.png) [@TorpedoTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TorpedoTed)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/83 "2009-01-13T04:17:24Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > What **TorpedoTed** was pointing out is that, in some sense, the vowel in “tar” is the same as that in “cot” (particularly given the father-bother merger) and the vowel in “tore” is the same as that in “caught”, yet even speakers who pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same way do not pronounce “tar” and “tore” the same way. That is, the cot-caught merger is neutralized immediately before /r/. The vowel in “tar” is generally the father-vowel, even among speakers who replace this sound with the bother-vowel in all other positions. The sound in “tore” is indeed the caught-sound (_never_ the bother-sound), even among speakers who normally render all caught-sounds as bother-sounds. That is to say _both_ mergers tend to be neutralized before R (though not in the Pittsburgh case where everything turns to the caught sound in all cases). ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/84 "2009-01-13T04:29:26Z")
> [@TorpedoTed](#): > > The vowel in “tar” is generally the father-vowel, even among speakers who replace this sound with the bother-vowel in all other positions. You are of course correct. My apologies for putting it poorly. ---
**Author:** ![Indistinguishable](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/90ced4/32.png) [@Indistinguishable](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Indistinguishable)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/85 "2009-01-13T04:30:26Z")
> [@Vox\_Imperatoris](#): > > Wait, so where are “tore”, “tar”, and “caught” the same? I’ve never heard that. “tar” and “tore” aren’t the same anywhere. No one has claimed that. What has been said is that the vowel in “tore” is the same as the vowel in “caught” for many speakers. Like I said, consider a generic British accent if necessary to see how this can be the case, in which “caught” and “court” are homophonous. ---
**Author:** ![DMark](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DMark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DMark)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 10:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/86 "2009-01-13T10:42:55Z")
Haven’t lived in Illinois for a long time, but always laugh when Obama says, “tuh” instead of “to”, as in, “I went tuh the Senate tuh speak tuh the Senators…” I also always feel the need to start a charity to send “r’s” to Massachusetts. They seem to only drink in ba’s and drive ca’s, not fa from home. But Californians? Hey, lived there and never heard what you seem to be hearing…there was Valley Girl speak for a few years, but other than that, never actually heard a “California accent”. Isn’t the Chicago accent considered the “normal” accent for most newscasters on national broadcasts? ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 3:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/87 "2009-01-13T15:06:02Z")
No, Chicago is one of the areas affected by the Northern Cities Vowel Shift. This article claims the closest accents to Standard American English are found in a blob going from western Nebraska to eastern Illinois: > **[General American English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_American)** > > General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, or from the North Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are th Standard ... I grew up in rural northwest Ohio, and I think that that is close to Standard American English. (Note that rural northwest Ohio means something far enough from Toledo to not be a suburb of it, since Toledo is part of the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.) I think it’s more correct to say that no single place in the U.S. has all the characteristics of Standard American English. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Tildrum](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/e95f7d/32.png) [@Tom\_Tildrum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Tildrum)\ **Post date:** [January 13, 2009, 6:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606/88 "2009-01-13T18:04:00Z")
> [@Indistinguishable](#): > > What **TorpedoTed** was pointing out is that, in some sense, the vowel in “tar” is the same as that in “cot” (particularly given the father-bother merger) and the vowel in “tore” is the same as that in “caught”, yet even speakers who pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same way do not pronounce “tar” and “tore” the same way. That is, the cot-caught merger is neutralized immediately before /r/. Now I get it. Thanks. I was mistaking the antecedent of “these sounds” in **TorpedoTed** ’s second paragraph in #67. :smack: [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/changes-in-american-english/480606.md?page=4)