No, those are all different too. I guess I’ve just always pronounced “bra” as if it were spelled “braw”. I also pronounce ma and pa as if they were spelled maw and paw.
Yeah, paw and braw. It’s the same vowel sound, for me, as taught and taut, which are homophones. Rah-rah, bah, fa la la, would be the other vowel sound, as in tot. I have to say, I can’t recall anyone saying “bra” as in “brassiere” like “rah”. Except for Chicagoans who say all “a” sounds that way.
Am I the only one here who pronounces bra like paw, but hasn’t merged cot and caught yet?
As far as I’m aware, all American speakers who merge these two vowels make them all sound like the vowel you and I hear in “bra”, “knot”, “cot”. And never like the vowel you and I speak & hear in “nought” and “caught”.
Me too Saying “Ma” as my dialect’s “mah!” reminds me of Michael Keaton in Johnny Dangerously in the scenes where he is addressing his dear old mom. Keaton might have been trying to put on a Brooklynese accent for the role, but his real-life western Pennsylvania upbringing came through with every “Mah!”.
Except that he was posing that question to someone who said he says “paw” and “bra” with the same vowel sound, but who pronounces “cot” and “caught” differently. That confused me also, but I suspect that he says “caught” with a different vowel sound than I use. I can’t imagine someone saying “bra” with the sound I use for “caught.” I don’t think people would know what he was talking about.
Right. His “Pa”, “Ma”, and “bra” are exceptions – some of which I share in my own dialect. They may follow an open-syllable rule of some sort of another … I haven’t done the analysis.
For those that do pronounce “cot” and “caught” the same … from the perspective of those of us who pronounce them differently, they pronounce both words like our “cot”.
In conversation, there is no confusion. The differences in vowel quality we are discussing are really quite slight in the grand scheme.
My dialect has gotten me into trouble occasionally, though. Way back when, I worked at a pizza delivery joint. We had a special for a nine-topping pizza. When I was talking about it on the phone with a customer, she asked me what I meant by “non-toppings” :smack:
I don’t think in this case it would be - if I said “bra” with the same vowel sound I use for “caught,” I really think people would be puzzled. They could probably figure it out if there were context clues, but on its own I think they wouldn’t know what I was saying (at least those people who don’t have the merger).
They sound the same to me on dictionary.com, too. Obviously there are a lot of regional variations on vowel sounds. And we Canadians luv superfluuous vouwels.
I have heard braw instead of bra before. But I just assumed that particular American dialect (not sure where) merged on aw instead of ah.
(I’m not using IPA because the exact vowels are too varied for me to be sure I got them right. English orthography is sufficient, I think, given the explanation in this thread.)
I’m born and raised in Cleveland. They are two different vowels. /pɔː/ versus /brɑː/. manson1972, I’m surprised by you. We just don’t have that merger in the Western Reserve.
This subject always makes me think of Melissa Etheridge’s song “All the Way to Heaven” where she goes (at 1:29) I want to find me a bar with a blue light on,
Dollar shot specials, a bartender named Dawn
Because she’s from Leavenworth, Kansas, where the cot/caught merger occurs, you can’t tell if she’s naming her imagined bartender “Dawn” or “Don.” You have to look at the printed lyrics to know.
manson1972, is your part of Northeast Ohio over toward Massilon or Steubenville? If so, that would explain it. Those are outside the Western Reserve. My Cleveland dialect has its historical roots in Connecticut, which is very unmerged.
Northeast Kansas may be a bit ambiguous on the map, but Melissa Etheridge has for many years lived in Los Angeles, which is completely merged.
And thanks for posting whatever those pronunciation symbols are, but regardless of what they say, ‘bra’ and ‘pa’ sound the same to me. So does “paw” and “paugh” if that was a word. And “caught” and “cot” are the same to me.
It’s interesting to me how you distinguish “pa” and “paw” but merge “cot” and “caught.” I would think that the differences would be equivalent in the two pairs.
Now that’s just messed up. I would make just as much sense in my brain to say Paw = You = Bat = Fish.
Saying “Ma” as my dialect’s “mah!” reminds me of Michael Keaton in Johnny Dangerously in the scenes where he is addressing his dear old mom. Keaton might have been trying to put on a Brooklynese accent for the role, but his real-life western Pennsylvania upbringing came through with every “Mah!”. 
