In almost all varieties of English, the vowel in “coat” is a diphthong – the back of the tongue moves upward throughout the duration of the vowel.
The vowel(s) in “cot” and “caught” are not commonly diphthongs in English, so lip rounding alone won’t quite get you to “coat”. You will be pronouncing something kiinda close, though.
Linguists talk about front vowels, middle vowels, and back vowels, referring to the location of the tongue’s “hump,” but in this case we’re comparing two back (or possibly middle) vowels. It’s possible that the tongue is slightly more forward in caught, but I’d guess what you’re feeling is mostly the rounding of the lips.
Sorry about the messed up italics in my previous post.
I thought "open up and say ‘ah’ " would make it clear – with the mouth wide open, the vowel in “law” is almost impossible to pronounce. I think I am accurately assuming that “law” pretty much the same across the U.S., so I’m using that as the benchmark sound with which we can compare.
Okay, here are some other examples of what I mean by “ah”, as opposed to “aw”:
– in the beginning of Led Zeppelin’s “The Immigrant Song”, Robert Plant definitely sings “aaah aah aaaaaaah ah!”. Nothing at all like any American’s pronunciation of “law”.
– on Saturday Night Live, when Jimmy Fallon’s Bostonian character Sully pronounces Nomar Garciaparra’s first name as “No-maaah!”. The vowel in that second syllable is distinct from the vowel in “law”.
…
I’ve not yet heard that anyone pronounces “cot” with the vowel in “law”. When people were saying that “cot” and “caught” were the same, I was fairly certain that they were using the "open up and say ‘ah’ " sound for both words.
Hmm, maybe when I have time I’ll make some WAV files of myself saying all these words – and Mary, merry and marry too. I’ll stick them up on some free webspace or something*.
To me, “cot” is nothing like the “open up and say Aaaaahh” vowel, and neither is “caught”. Or “cat”, for that matter 
When I do that it just sounds like noise to me. Interesting. Is it perhaps that breathy “snooty” or “blue blood” sound as in “Haahh-vaahhd University”, or the way Charles calls himself “ChAAAHHHHles” on the MASH t.v. show? No offense intended to anyone; I’m just trying to place the sound; it’s totally unfamiliar to me.
Dictionary.com says “caught” is the same vowel sound as “for”. Now I’m really confused. I pronounce “for” with a long ‘o’ sound, like coat.
ALL of those sound exactly the same to me.
Cot, caught, ah, law, la (in solflege), saw, bought, nought, fought, pot, hot. All identical.
Are there no Bostonians around?
Some Boston accents (and there are more than one) will make “top” sound like “tawp”. After all, everyone knows that a “top” is something you put over things to keep them from getting rained on!
OK, playtime’s over.
Proceed to this comprehensive list of English vowels, complete with listnening samples. Windows Media Player will do fine.
Click on the sample using the words “hot” and “rock” as spoken by the American speaker. That is what I call “ah”, and is distinct from the vowel in “law”.
Then click on the sample using the words “call” and “four” as the British speaker pronounces them. This vowel is what I call “aw” as in “law” (incidentally, I, like most all Americans, don’t use this vowel for "call "and “four”). I’ve never heard an American pronounce “law” with anything other than that vowel … but there’s a first time for everything.
Resident cultural anthropologist here:
There is no standard “American” pronunciation, no distinct “American accent.”
Across the country each area has a learned ‘regional dialect’ of American English, and words from one district to another can be pronounced quite differently, to the degree that people from extremely different districts can have some difficulty in understanding one another.
To answer the OP: sometimes.
I always love reading these threads and saying the words over and over to myself to try to figure out if there’s any difference, or even where such a difference would be.
To my Californian ear (and tongue), “cot” and “caught” are exactly the same, and, while I can conceive of two different ways (but not three) to say “merry”, “Mary”, and “marry”, they all sound the same from my mouth as well.
If someone wants to put up some sound files, I hereby volunteer my webserver to host them. Just send me an email and we’ll figure it out.
I thought that was a distinctly Bostonian thing. To me, that sound is right between “man” and “father”. I wasn’t aware that that sound existed outside of New England. I mean, Fallon is doing it as a parody, after all. Like the movie “Goodwill Hunting” or the Cliff Claven character on “Cheers”. Those are put-on accents.
Yeah, we definitely do in California.
Sure … I and people from my area(s) use that vowel all the time in words like “hot”, “rock”, “ball”, etc. We don’t exaggerate it, though – it doesn’t come out “haaaaaaaht!”. The duration of the vowel is appropriately shorter in common words used in everyday speech.
[url"http://asstudents.unco.edu/faculty/tbredehoft/UNCclasses/ENG419/Phonetics.html"]Here’s another set of vowel listening samples.
Those who pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same: scroll down halfway and find the samples for “Bob” and “bought”. Do those vowels sound alike? Listen to them a few times and see if a difference becomes apparent.
For me, “cot” and the sample “Bob” have the same vowel.
For me, “caught”, the sample “bought” and “law” have the same vowel.
Goodwill Hunting? I don’t think so. Ben and Matt are both from the Boston area (Sommerville, IIRC) and actually do a job with the accent.
Cliff’s also is, I believe, a sincere attempt at doing a Boston accent, but he doesn’t pull it off.
BTW, samples of “Mary”, “merry”, and “marry” are given as well. Their rendering of “Mary” sounds to me like may-ree. I pronounce “merry” and “marry” like the samples, and “Mary” like their sample for “merry”.
That may mean you’ve got it right.
[quote]
Slight tangent: there used to be yet another low vowel that was used only in New England, in certain words such as ask. It was more forward than the vowels in cot and caught but less forward than the one in cat. I’ve heard that it’s become almost extinct in the last fifty years. Can anyone find me a recording of Kennedy saying “ask not what your country can do for you . . .”? I want to see if he uses that vowel.
Sorry, what does “do a job with the accent” mean? Do Ben and Matt speak like that all the time? I don’t think they do.
My intention wasn’t to give a critique of how well he does it, but only to point out that the New England manner of speaking is considered an accent. We don’t speak that way in the rest of the country.
I mean that, to a local, they wouldn’t sound phony. Cliff would sound phony.
I interpretted “put-on” as “parody” in your post. I guess that was my mistake.
Oh, no - I didn’t mean that at all. “Put-on” as in deliberate. And actually, I think SnakeSpirit had it right - there’s no American accent, just regional differences.
I’m Californian, and for me
cot != caught
Don != Dawn
but for me the difference is probably more in the duration of the vowel than the quality. augh and aw last longer in my mouth.
It might be better to stick to examples of syllables that have identical terminating consonants. It’s almost impossible to pronounce “Bob” and “bought” exactly the same, because in the case of the “bought”, while you are uttering the vowel the tip of your tongue starts to move up and forward in order to articulate the ‘t’ at the alveolar ridge behind your upper teeth. This affects the vowel sound. Though I agree that in this case there is still a qualitative difference in the two vowel sounds, apart from the affect of the terminal ‘t’.
Whether the terminal consonant is voiced or not–
t (unvoiced) d (voiced)
k (unvoiced) g (voiced)
s (unvoiced) z (voiced)
also has an effect, chiefly by the fact that the voiced consonant tends to make the vowel longer. The a’s in “cat” vs “cad” are different for that reason.
Just wanted to point out that the on-line Merriam-Webster dictionary — which covers American usage and pronunciation primarily — records “dog” as having both of the pronunciations under discussion. And likewise for “bog”, “fog”, and “log”. On the other hand, we Americans are unanimous in saying “agog” with the “ah” pronunciation only. According to M-W.
Unfortunately, “snog” is not listed in this particular dictionary. I’m sure it’s just an oversight.
Turning to “-on-” words, I find that “tonic”, “bond”, “proton”, and “monster” are all “ah”. So are most “-op-” words: “mop”, “opulence”, “synoptic”, and “Gnip-Gnop” (the latter being another mysterious omission from this dictionary). The “-ol-” case is a little more interesting. “Jolly” and “oligarch” are “ah” words, “alcohol” is “aw”, and “parasol” can be either. This again according to M-W.
(In all the above searching, I looked for words with an “o” that, in the U.S. anyway, could plausibly be pronounced with either the “aw” or “ah” sounds. Obviously there are other ways to pronounce a single “o” vowel sound; you need only examine this very sentence, for example.)
As an ex-Midwesterner, I found almost all of Merriam-Webster’s pronunciations in agreement with my own upbringing. This naturally raises my esteem of Merriam-Webster, but might raise the hackles of Americans from elsewhere. There are certainly regions where one or the other of the two sounds isn’t used, and is replaced entirely by the other.
If you’re a foreigner trying to make sense of this, or worse yet trying to pass yourself off as a native, I can only feel sorry for you. It’s just an arbitrary feature of the regional dialect.