Oh, yes - and I’m a midwestern American. Northern Kentuckian most of my life; central Kentucky for the past four and a half years.
“Cot” is a little more o-sounding than “caught.” Also, it kinda sounds like “cut,” at least a little. “Caught” is more nasal-sounding. Also, for whatever reason, when I say “cot,” my inflection goes down. When I say “caught,” it goes up.
The “Los” in “Los Angeles,” however, I pronounce as. . .well, the same way that one would pronounce “Los Lobos.” Long o, closer to “coat” than to either “cot” or “caught” (if we’re sticking with the c-t theme). I have five years of Spanish that won’t let me pronounce it any other way.
As for background. . .grew up in the Chicago area, with my pronunciations influenced by my Chicago-born father and my Ottawa-born French-Canadian mother.
For me:
cot = caht
caught = cawt
Los Angeles – same vowel sound as caught: Lawce
I pronounce all the O-sounds in cot, caught and Los the same. Los = loss, as well. Naughty and knotty are the same, and they have an almost-d sound instead of t, unless I think about it.
Incidentally, I pronounce the second word in Los Angeles “an-jell-less”. Is this not how Angeleños pronounce it? (And is that the proper name for an inhabitant of LA? “Los Angelesian” doesn’t seem right for some reason.)
Cot, caught, knotty, naughty, taught, spot, Los-- all the same vowel for me.
I should clarify-- I only pronounce Los like that when used in Los Angeles. For, say, Los Alamos, I pronounce the Los similarly to the correct Spanish way. For some reason, though, for Los Angeles, I have it homophone to “loss”.
Interesting map. Since the results are all over the map (sorry for the pun), it looks like this isn’t a regionalism at all. What else could it be? Familial dialect?
That’s what I wondered. Must be more than region at least. Somebody pointed out in a similar thread yesterday that region-to-region migrations may contribute to the variants. Another opinion I liked (in a still older thread about how shone ought to be pronounced) has to do with how we hear those sounds, as though our pronunciation is tied intimately to the way we perceive the sounds ourselves.
The idea that we tend to mimic the sounds made by people in our region whose pronunciations we prefer may account for multiple versions in the same basic locale.
I feel that all these ingredients are at play in the section of Tennessee where I have been since 1959.
Even within my own family there are significant variations. Some of that may be the influence of TV and other nation-wide influences.
Caught <> los <> cot. Los is somewhere between the two.
Funny, I just realized I say Las Angelas (almost a short a sound) but Lós Alamos (long O).
Different sounds, “cot” and “Los” sounding very similar, here in New Zealand. Following the English pattern, “cot” and “caught” sound different to each other.
Strewth! Blimey! Crikey!
Over this side of the pond, it’s:
‘caught’ = ‘taught’ or ‘taut’ or ‘port’
‘cot’ = ‘hot’ or ‘knot’
‘Los (Angeles)’ = ‘loss’ or ‘boss’
I blame the Romans, the Greeks, the Angles, the Saxons, the French etc…
This is how I say them all too. I’m a native Detroiter. Except I think I’m even flatter and harsher in my pronounciation of “cot” than Chicagoans, if that’s possible (I’ve had people in Chicago call me “really nasal;” I’m like, “Have you listened to yourself lately?”)
Cot = caht
caught = cawt
Sunspace - A resident of Los Angeles is call an Angelino.
I was born in Michigan and have also lived in Minnestota, Ohio and Tennessee.
StG
I pronounce Los Angeles “LOSS Angeles.”
I pronounce cot as a word that rhymes with got.
Caught rhymes with bought. The vowels have an aww sound.
I am from the South and I cannot properly pronounce the word “pie.”
caught and cot are the same vowel (West coast US. Sooner or later, all vowels will become a schwa.) - but “Los” is an “Oh”.
LOSS Angeles
cot /= caught. From reading this thread I gather that it should be the same based on where I’m from, but my parents were both born elsewhere. AFAIK the cot/caught type of differentiation is phonemically negligible, in that the difference is not something we need to detect in order to understand what the person is saying. Context will always provide the answer.
Now that pop/soda/coke thing…there’s something where you really do have to be consciously aware of the regional meanings if you travel about the country.
All the same sound for me. LOSS Angeles, too, unless I’m speaking Spanish.
Northern Californian, born and bred. (But my parents are both Angelenos and that’s how they pronounce the “los”, too.)
Addendum: the only times I’ve ever had communication problems with my friends here in the Midwest it was because of words with this sound. (“pond/pawn” and “Dawn/Don” were the culprits, respectively.)
Ditto for me – a native Californian. Although I realize that I’m not pronouncing “Los” properly; when I say “Los Lobos” I use a different pronunciation than I do for “Los Angeles” (which sounds like Loss Angelus). The name of the city has become widely de-spanishified.