…which vowel do you use in “Los” as in “Los Angeles”?
All the same to me.
All three are different to me. The “o” in Los Angeles is about half-way between the other two.
I pronounce the ‘o’ in cot and Los in the same way. Caught is more ‘cawt’.
Yes I pronounce cot and caught with different vowels.
Cot rhymes with not, pot, lot, spot etc.
Caught rhymes with thought, nought, taught, bought etc.
In Los Angeles I use a vowel that’s pretty much the same as “cot”. Perhaps a tiny bit more closed.
Longer “a” in caught.
I think pronouncing them the same is more common in the US; I moved here from Scotland and this was one of the pronounciation difference I noticed.
Wait, this may be because I’m just getting up, but the words in the ‘cot’ list rhyme with words from the ‘caught’ list. In fact, ‘not’ and ‘naught’ are pronounced the same, are they not? I wonder if these are just more examples of what the op has brought up.
To me they’re all the same.
They’re all three different. “Caught” rhymes with “taught”, “cot” rhymes with “spot”. The “Los” in Los Angeles is somewhere between the two, but nearer “caught”.
To me? Yes, they are not; they’re not even similar. But I hear some places even pronounce “pin” and “pen” the same, so what do I know?
Do you pronounce “naughty” and “knotty” the same?
See this is the problem with comparing the pronunciation of words to other words that rhyme. Chances are that if a population pronounce cot and caught the same way, then they’ll pronounce everything else that rhymes with both words the same way as well.
I pronounce caught like court. Is court the same as cot to you as well?
I pronounce los to rhyme with cot.
I agree with Dusty 100%. All three are different. Pen/pin and naught/not are different too.
Here’s what a survey found on this issue.
cot=“kaht”*
caught=“kawt”
los=“lawse” (Sounds just like loss)
*Chicagoian, born and bred. This one even makes me wince, it’s so flat and harsh. 'Da Bearsh!
What WhyNot said – and I have a fairly generic East Coast accent.
cot and caught are different, and Los is like neither
cot rhymes with pot
caught rhymes with fraught
and Los sounds a little bit like “lows” but with a softer “s”
Does that make any sense?
NY/NJ guy here. I use the same pronunciations.
Caught has the same vowel sound as “lost”.
Cot has a shorter vowel sound, like not and pot.
To me it’s “cot” and “cawt” for “cot” and “caught”.
This fellow Sydneysider says them the same way.
However, based on the concern raised that rhyming comparisons are going to be possibly worthless because of their being pronounced similarly by any given local population, I’ll try to “think like an American” here. For mine, I pronounce both ‘cot’ and ‘Los’ the with the same ‘o’ sound an American with a generic ‘newscaster’ non-regional accent would pronounce the first ‘o’ in “Boston”. It’s ‘kot’ and ‘Loss Angeleez’ to me. I have, however, heard Americans say “Lows Angeles”, which while closer (to my ears) to the proper Spanish, is also a little exaggerated. The Spanish ‘Los’ is just a fraction shorter and less full.
I pronounce “caught” with a slightly nasal effect, and hold it just the tiniest bit longer, I think. “Cot” has the same vowel sound as “off” or the first part of “mafia”, and, incidentally, the “los” in “Los Angeles”.
Yeah, that’s the phonetic explanation I was seeking.