To me, this makes the pronunciation of “caught” sound like the parody of the Long Island accent on Mike Myers’ “Cawfee Tawk” Saturday Night Live sketches.
They sound different to me (I’m in western NY).
I’d also be interested in where his/her parents are from. My kids are growing up in NC, with parents from MD and Australia. They have a bizarre accent and they’ll change it slightly depending on who they’re talking to (ex., they’ll say “cah” to my husband and “car” to me).
Southern CA.
There is a very slight difference to me in caught/cot, but not enough to keep them from rhyming or being homonyms. Mostly that the vowel sound in caught is stretched out juust a hair. It’s still the same vowel sound though.
The vowel sound for fought/hot is identical.
wow. Those words sound so different to my ears.
But, apparently, some people say something like “I cot a fish.” The things I don’t know, and didn’t know I don’t know, could fill an airplane hanger.
Of course they’re not pronounced the same. Cot is pronounced \ˈkät, while caught is pronounced \ˈthrōt ˈwȯr-blər ˈman-ˌgrōv\
They hang them up?
Sorry, what I’m saying is that the second one is how people here say caught and how people say cot both; I said it could be “caught or cot” because as a listener you interpret which word is meant through context and wouldn’t know in isolation which word they’d said (as with hear/here, see/sea, or be/bee). I’ve never heard anyone use the other three pronounciations at all.
But now I suppose you’ll tell us that you pronounce “hanger” and “hangar” the same. 
Of course not, only a Philistine would pronounce those alike. 
Grew up in PG County MD work in DC and live in Baltimore. I pronouce the words in question differently.
This is how I would pronounce these words as well.
Born in California, raised all over.
As a non-anglophone I’ve always been bothered with stocking vs. stalking. How do you say ?
Stocking = Stahking
Stalking = Stawking
There’s like 75% of an L in there for my SE Michigan accent: “Staw(*.75)king”
Eh. To me, saying aloud “Are you stalking the girl in the stockings?” produces two uses of the same word-sound. In other words, no, no difference in pronunciation.
Georgian here (Atlanta sub-dialect) and the two words are not homophones to me.
But I pronounce ‘pin’ and ‘pen’ differently as well.
I will query my pubmates this evening.
I don’t say them with any difference at all.
Interesting. I think I pronounce both ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ similarly to your #2. But I’ve occaisionally heard people say I have a hint of an English accent (relative to other Ontarians, that is).
I’m not Philistine; I’m Canadian. Sheesh, some people…
I pronounce those almost identically. There’s a hint of an ‘l’ sound in ‘stalking’ that isn’t there in ‘stocking’, but the vowels are the same.
Actually, your “caught” and “cot” do sound different to me. However, the difference is not as exaggerated as in my (Chicago) accent, where they’re very clearly different vowel sounds.
Here’s my (nasally) version of those two sentences.