I should that when I was growing up in New England, we would have pronounced it more like GAW-th’m. But I’ve been gone a long time and most of that accent is gone for me.
I’m still with you on your initial reply. Bother and father rhyme? This illustrates the essential difficulty with describing how you pronounce something by comparing it to some other word when the discussion involves multiple nationalities.
Thudlow was basically trying to say that froth is more of a “frawth” sound (like bother) whereas goth is more of a “gahth” sound (like father).
And yes, the multiple nationalities bit is tricky.
I still am not sure how cot and caught sound differently either. I suspect it’s the same as above: cot/father caught/bother.
In my version of english, cot sounds like bother and caught sounds like court.
I posted this audio sample of me pronouncing cot/hot and caught/fought for elucidation.
Quite right. But always fun as we “talk” past each other in this non-audio medium.
And yes, to this western-US raised person, bother & father are indistinguishable after the initial consonant.
One of the first things I thought when reading this thread was that hey, “goth” and “moth” don’t rhyme! It’s the cot/caught merger thing.
I guess I’m a bit annoyed somtimes with all the Californians who come over to the east coast and act like English has only two or three vowels because they’ve merged them all. No self-respecting New Jerseyite would claim that goth and moth rhyme, or for that matter, that “ferry”, “scary”, and “parry” rhyme (Mary/marry/merry merger).
Yeah, interesting. I hear the same distinction (even more distinction actually) in people from Michigan and upstate New York.
To me all these vowels are the same and sound like your “caught.”
You know, it’s kind of surreal to me that a thread on the SDMB about the pronunciation of something has gotten this far without somebody claiming it should be “Throatwarbler Mangrove”…
Not for me – Gotham, father, bother and cot are the same. Caught and froth are the same.
We welcome your Canadian passport application.
Nah. More like gawth-m. The syllable breaks after the t, not before.
Debatable.
Ah you a native New Hampshah-ite? 'Cause I wouldn’t expect one to pronounce the first vowel in “father” and “brother” the same.
No, no – father and bother are the same. Brother is like another, or mother.
(I’m from NYS, raised by Pennsylvanian parents.)
My bad. We New Englanders tend to misplace our "r"s. But still, you wouldn’t find most New Englanders pronouncing “father” and “bother” the same. Where most Americans pronounce a “short o”, we pronounce it more like “aw”.
A “tarp” is a “tahp” and “top” is “tawp”.
Don’t bahthah with that stain on the tawp of the tahp.
It’s been enough years here that I have gotten used “potty”=party and “my aren’t”=my aunt. I even slip and say “gararge” myself.
I’m tuned in to the cot/caught merger thing, but it does sometimes come up in unexpected places. Like it makes sense that some areas pronounce cot and caught the same, and some don’t, but why would some areas also pronounce goth and moth differently?
Are there places in the US where goth, moth and soap have the same vowel sound?
At least everyone’s agreed that the OP was wrong that the “am” in Gotham does not need to be pronounced like it was a slice if cooked pig.
Have you never seen any of the Batman movies?
I usually have a laugh when Tim from Moonshiners says “Kaw” like he’s using onomatopoeia for the sound a crow makes but he’s actually saying “car”.
The world would be a much poorer place if we all had the same accents.