I sometimes see phonetic spellings on American sites use “aw” to represent the short “o” sound such as that in “rob” or “hot”. An expample is the Snopes page mentioned in the Apocryphal strange names thread, which gives “NAWS-mo king” as the pronunciation for the name “Nosmo King”.
To this Brit, “NAWS-mo” does not sound like “NOS-mo”. Are the sounds really identical in (some? all?) American accents? Does “cot” sound the same as “caught”, for instance?
Yes. in fact, this American has a hard time imagining how you’d pronounce them differently.
Hmm.
Noz-mo (Like Cosmo Kramer)
Paws (like dawg paws)
Dog does not rhyme with “flog”. Neither does hog (but hog rhymes with dog)
Definitely two different sounds.
(American)
Oh and no, cot most certainly doesn’t sound like caught, and it’s one of my pet peeves to hear it pronounced that way (although I admit it’s irrational, regional differences will always exist)
This is often a topic of conversation on alt.usage.english.
In my Midwestern dialect
caught = cot (but does not = court)
Mary = marry = merry
horse = hoarse
pearl = purl
They are definitely the same in some parts of the U.S., but not all. I am from the East Coast, and I hear and pronounce them differently. (The difference stems from the lips being more rounded in caught than in cot.)
Based on my limited, informal observation, I would say that pronouncing them the same is more common in the West, particularly in California.
California: same
Connecticut: different
Is this an east/west thing? Anyone in, say, Iowa?
Not in any American accent I’ve ever heard, with the possible exception of a Bronx accent. That’s the only one that even really comes halfway close.
RR
I’ve just given you my Ohio accent caught = cot.
I’m thinking that it’s the same in the South too. Apparently it’s just the Yankiest of Yanks who pronounce them differently.
Sorry, the thread filled up really fast - only the first 3 replies were there when I wrote that!
It doesn’t?
Like Nametag, I can’t imagine how the two could be pronounced differently. If I say “cot”, but round my lips more, I get “coat”. Surely “coat” doesn’t rhyme with “caught”?
I am currently living in Iowa, and I think I have noticed people from this region pronouncing them the same. But I wouldn’t want to guess at the prevalence of it.
A friend of mine, from California, once made fun of Easterners, accusing them of saying “Nevawda” instead of the Western pronunciation, which uses the same vowel as in fat. I noticed that neither of those pronunciations sounds like the way I say the state’s name!
And Fikere’s phonetics here show you that in some American accents O = AW = AH.
Because I say “Ne VAH da” but to me that’s nothing like “Ne VAW da.”
Not so fast, TellMeI’mNotCrazy – in the New Orleans area, and I believe here in Central Mississippi, “cot” and “caught” are different.
I’ll try to explain:
"cot" – the vowel here for me is the “ah” of “Open up and say ‘ah’.”
"caught" – I pronounce this word with the vowel in “law” and “saw”. I also pronounce “dog” and “log” with that vowel.
You have to round your lips a little bit less than you do for coat and make sure you’re not closing your jaw any when you do so.
Actually, the problem may be that you and I don’t pronounce cot the same way!
I’m no good at phonetics, but to me, “caught” is a front-of-the-mouth word and cot is more at the back-of-the-mouth. I know there are actual lingual terms for this but hell if I know what they are.
“Dog” and “flog” rhyme for me, both using the vowel of “law”. The only short word I can think of right now that ends in “-og” and doesn’t take the “aw” vowel is “bog”, which uses the “ah” vowel.
<shrug>
And the explanation falls through as people for whom cot=caught say every single vowel listed in your explanation exactly the same.
My linguistics teacher (and I am so far from knowledgable, it isn’t funny) said that she couldn’t say it either - being a Pac NW person, but that you hear the other vowel a lot on the Sopranos (it’s the vowel sound in “Pauly”)
I have lived most of my years in central Indiana, which is somewhat east of the smack-dab middle of the US. In my mouth,:
Cot is more open than caught.
Mary is the same as merry, but marry’s “a” is more like the “a” in cat. Same with Harry.
Nosmo King is Nahs-mo, not Naws-mo.
Cog is more open (cahg) than dog (edging toward dawg,) but not by much.
For me, drink sounds like ink, but I know some folks who rhyme it with tank.