Do you have the cot–caught merger?

[ilikeverin]

I have the merger. As BRTD noted, Minnesota is a weird liminal zone, and I seem to have gone with the western variant.

[ilikeverin]

No, I pronounce "cot" like "caht" and "caught" like "cawt."

This

Same for me

Wait, “caht”? As in, cot rhymes with bat?

Isn't that like an Upper Midwest thing? It's like a very nasally accent. It makes Wisconsin sound more like Wiscansin (a as in can).

That's a different vowel shift, the Northern Cities Vowel Shift.

I recommend not trying to use English orthography to describe vowels (American English has, like, 14 monophthongs that we've for some reason decided to represent using 5 letters, let alone our diphthongs)... if you folks want to clarify, make recordings and upload them somewhere.