I’m puzzled to hear that two Californians are on the cot=caught side. I’m a life-long Californian and to me the two sounds are quite distinct.
I feel like I always get to be the one to post links to that Harvard dialect survey.
Here are the nationwide responses (and maps) for cot vs. caught.
Here are the links to individual state data… the cot vs. caught question is number 28.
I’m happy to record some authentic British pronunciations - my MP3 player records straight to MP3, which should make things easy.
I’ve had a listen to some of the clips on those sites, and they only add to the confusion 
Any suggestions for words to make audio files of? So far we have:
cot
caught
Mary
marry
merry
I’m curious about two unrelated ones 
Your and you’re. I pronounce them differently. Does anyone else? (Yore and yewr)
You are crazy.
Yes, but only if I’m speaking very precisely.
As for making sound files, I think you’ll find that a lot of these issues are covered thoroughly at http://alt-usage-english.org/
Excellent site – I’ll save my breath then
Thank God for context.
I dunno about that, but from the looks of it, maybe British in a past life…
What part of Ohio? Up near Cleveland (East side) I’ve never heard them pronouced to rhyme. Cot like hot has the classical short “o” sound sounding like “ah” as in when the doctor is looking at your throat. Caught begins with the sound caw rhyming with paw as in dog’s paw.
I hear the difference, but that’s not how I pronounce them.
I lived in California for about half my life and now live in Washington, and I use the same vowel in cot, caught, bought, don, dawn, paw, jaw, law, pa, ma, log, hog, frog, dog, bog, etc. Also the same vowel in Mary, marry, merry, ferry, fairy, bury, Jerry, Gary, Cary, Kerry, and hairy (but not hurry, scurry, or furry, which rhyme).
I have never met an American who pronounces “law” and “cot” with different vowels.
I grew up in St. Louis, and I pronounce these words completely differently.
Using City names as examples - hopefully everyone pronounces famous cities the same way:
“law” I pronounce like Auburn, Sausalito, Austin, etc
“cot” I pronounce like Rotterdam, Ottawa, Nottingham, etc.
(American raising his hand)
I pronounce them with different vowels. I’m quite sure I am not alone.
That’s unlikely to be true, unless you’ve met very few Americans. But you can’t be expected to notice the pronunciation habits of everyone you meet. I never noticed people saying cot and caught the same way, until I started listening for it, and then it was everywhere.
I suspect you’re in the minority. Life-long Californian here (well, except for the past couple of years) and cot and caught are the same sound. As are Don and Dawn.
I (and everyone I knew growing up) pronounced law, saw, cot and caught all with the ah of “Open up and say ah” vowel. In fact, we had an English teacher from Georgia who pronounced the word law like you’re thinking and we always made fun of her about it.
She also pronounced lawyer differently. We always pronounced it loy-er, she pronounced lah-yer.
Using city names as examples is not a good idea. Place names are subject to the same general variations as all other words plus their own peculiar variations—the word Nevada, as I mentioned before, is usually pronounced with a vowel similar to the one in cat by people who live near Nevada. But these same people do not pronounce cot or caught like cat!
Auburn=Sausalito=Austin=Rotterdam=Ottawa=Nottingham=law=cot to me.
Same here.
I promise to read all 3 pages of the thread after I reply, but I wanna post…
I’m a Southerner transplanted to the American Northeast.
In the South, the “aw” or “au” or (sometimes spelled) “ou” sound is a diphthong, and is accomplished like this: first you do the “ah” sound as in “father” or “blah”, also sometimes represented with an o as in “cot” or “bog”. Aaaah. That sound. Then you close your mouth down to almost a w-as-vowel. Aaaaahhhwwwwwwww.
In the New York region, the “aw” / “au” sound is rendered as a pure vowel, a butt-ugly one to be sure, but pure nevertheless. It’s a pure vowel almost foreign to Southern folks. Georgians for whom the first syllable of the word “moment” does not rhyme with “go” are using the New York “aw” as the vowel for that syllable. To a person not from the Northeast, it may sound as if they are interposing an “r” in there. Because that’s where Southerners hear that vowel most often: followed by an r, as in “for”, “or”, “door”, and so on. Imagine the vowel without the “r”. That’s how Yankees do “aw”.
Pronounce the word “lawyer”. A Southerner hearing a Northeasterner saying the word will hear it as “lorrier” (but the r sound in the first syllable isn’t really there, it’s just that). Meanwhile, a Northeasterner hearing a Southerner saying the same word will hear it as “low year” except stretched out with a Southernish drawl (and that’s not really correct either, the “o” sound is pure and the Southern “aw” isn’t, it’s a diphthong, it would be more like “laaaahooooeauwwwwy’r” except not all drawn out like that.). Or saying “Aww, poor baby” — to the Southern ear the New Yorker is saying “Or, poor baby” (except there’s a diff between the “or” and the “poor”, no real “r” in the “or”) and to the Northeastern ear the speaker from Tallahassee is saying “Oh, poor baby” (except the vowel in “oh” slides as it goes if you listen).
Onwards to the traditional short “o” sound. Hot. Pot. Sod. Rod. Bod. Neither the New Yorker nor the native of Tallahassee is going to rhyme any of those with bawd, sought, fraught, jaw, etc. But all of us, from both regions, are going to say they have the same vowel sound as bah, father, la la la, rah rah, and the Shah of Iran. Dunno if you folks from the left side of the Atlantic would make a distinction there. I do know that you use a vowel that we’re largely oblivious to: the a in path or after are different for you than the “ae” forward-a sound in at, rat, sat, cat, yes? And for nearly all of us over here they are not (we say “path” with the same “a” as in “cat”, generally speaking).