Every so often on the SDMB, people are astonished to hear that cot and caught (don/dawn, not/naught) are homophones or conversely, they have different pronunciations. You can read about the phenomenon hear on Wikipedia. Cot-caught merger.
I’m not going to get into the explanation of the merger since I already am aware and understand it. Instead, I want to hear from Dopers because we haven’t done a poll on the merger yet.
Here’s a map to familiarize yourself with where the merger exists and where they are still separate. Map
Please forgive my fat fingers in the poll. It should be an “ah” and “aw” sound.
I answered option 2. I’m from upstate New York, and there is a clear difference to me. Of course, you are going to get a lot of different responses based on where folks live. I always find these kind of differences interesting.
That’s why I created option 3 in the poll for you.
For myself, I grew up in SE Michigan and can clearly hear the difference. I have a few other regional accent quirks as well but am not as far down the Great Northern Cities Vowel Shift as my wife or extended family.
I live in SE Michigan and I know there is a difference because I have had weird miscommunication issues over that sound (a coworker and I once had a bizarre back-and-forth where I was talking about a pond and she was hearing me talk about a pawn), but I’m from Northern California and I can neither hear nor pronounce the difference.
I’m from South Carolina and they’re pronounced the same. I’m not sure if I’ve ever heard an American say them differently.
Then again, my boyfriend made merciless fun of me last night for saying “I was going to get a quart of milk…” because evidently my “quart” has no “q”. It does to me! I am told that I say “caught of milk” and “terlet paper”.
