We don’t need to hear about your personal prejudices in this thread. 
I’ve lived in the northeast my entire life, and here cot/caught are pronouced exactly the same. I actually can’t picture someone saying them in different ways. Likewise tot/taught & dawn/don are the same and Erin/Aaron aren’t identical but close enough to make you guess which by context.However this does not apply to concord/concorde (they’re more different than concord vs conqured) or marry/merry/mary, both of which seem to be pronounced the same elsewhere.
Oakminster, to many of us all four of those words rhyme, so it doesn’t clarify anything to give examples like that. You’d probably be puzzled if I said “hat rhymes with mat, but on the other hand sat rhymes with cat,” which is how your examples come off to us.
The second is an actual word (being either caught or cot), and the others sound more like silly exaggerations like the “Apples and Bananas” song than actual attempts to say those words. Which pronunciation was supposed to be cot, and which caught?
Thanks for that. I was having trouble understanding what difference in pronunciation you guys were talking about.
I might pronounce it like you did if I was talking about the word itself, if that makes sense, but in casual conversation I pronounce it exactly the same as “cot”. And btw, even with that pronunciation I still think it rhymes with “cot”. 
Agreed in regards to the silly pronunciations. But I thought it was obvious which words were supposed to be which. Go listen again- the first word he says is “cot” and the second is “caught”.
One word pair where most, if not all of you, make the distinction:aw and ah
Aw, look at the cute baby!
Aw, I’m sorry your team lost.
Aw has the vowel sound of caught.
Ah, this cold drink tastes great on a hot day.
Stick out your tongue and say ‘ah.’
Ah has the vowel sound of cot.
I was born and raised at ground zero of the Great Northern Vowel Shift region. I lost most of my accent, but I say “cot” and “caught” with different pronunciations. However, I pronounce “Mary”, “merry” and “marry” the same, as do most Buffalonians. No nasal flat A when I say it, but still …
If someone only uses one pronounciation for both words, how do you expect it to be obvious which is supposed to be which when someone else introduces a second pronounciation we’re unfamiliar with?
See newme’s post.
Edit: It’s funny- even though I only listened to the recording a few minutes ago I’ve already forgotten the difference and I can’t replicate it without going back to the file to check. So yeah, I’m confident with my vote of “yes” on the poll.
Whenever one of these pronunciation questions comes up I always think how New Yorkers pronounce the words in each pair differently (cot/caught, mary/marry/merry, dawn/don, Erin/Aaron, pin/pen, dog/log etc) and it makes me wonder if there is some notable pair of words like that that we pronounce as the same whereas the other regions would say them differently?
They only sound silly and exaggerated to you because you’re not from those places. Believe me, I softened the third and forth pronunciations. In reality, they can be a bit…well, more pronounced. Most New York City dwellers have heard at least one person say cowaht, if they don’t pronounce it that way themselves.
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I’ve heard all of these pronounciations except #4. I’ve been around Appalachian dialects all of my life and have never heard that pronounciation. The Appalachian dialect speakers that I’m most familiar with (southern Appalachia) tend to pronounce it as a dipthong, caw-ut, with the dipthong ever-so-slight.
missred (dialect: mixed US midwest, Great Lakes, Appalachian, mid-south)
To be crystal clear, the first one was cot. The second was caught. I’m confused when you say “The second is an actual word (being either caught or cot)”. Are you saying that my second pronunciation sounds like cot to you, and that you pronounce the word with an aww sound? If so, I find that extremely interesting because I have never heard that, but would love to. Or are you saying you can’t hear the difference between my first and second pronunciation? I’d find that extremely interesting as well, as they are clearly different.
You’re correct. I’ve heard caw-ut as well as caoot, even from the same person, so I guess it depends on the cadence of speech. I used to watch a few fishing programs, and those anglers certainly used to wax excitedly about the fight in the fish they caoot. 
I took a linguistics class, and the teacher described one of the vowels (I don’t remember whether it was the vowel that’s supposed to be in “caught” or “cot”) as the sound they make on the Sopranos when they say the name “Paulie.” None of the west coast raised people in the class could say it right. But I can hear it there or in Janice-from-Friends’ accent.
Onomatopoeia, to me, the first two sound like a minor accent difference. I can hear a difference between the two, but I could not assign one to “cot” and one to “caught.” Either could go with either word. I had no idea which one was supposed to be which.
As for the third and fourth, luckily “catch” is a transitive verb and requires a direct object and context.
This is fun. To my British ears, not only do the words in the OP sound distinctly different, but the examples given here don’t match either (Aw does not sound like caught and Ah does not sound like cot).
For me, caught and cot sound like short and shot (please don’t tell me you pronounce those the same way).
I grew up in New Jersey and currently live in Boston (which is supposed to be one place these are merging), but I don’t pronounce them the same, and neither do most of the folks I talk to. I have heard them pronounced in the same fashion, but it was by people from the MidWest and the Intermountain West.
I take exception to this, in that “small” and “doll” already have the same vowel pronunciation, i.e., a “doll” is pronounced “dawl” and poked with a tool called an “awl.”
But in Michigan, where I grew up, they most certainly aren’t pronounced the same!
One horrible, horrible thing some Michiganders do is ask to borrow my ink “pin.” Grrrr!
I usually think of how to speak them in a posh British accent.
I’ve lived in MoCo my entire life and never heard anyone that’s from here pronounce them the same.
chizzuk, are you in/from PG?