Do you have the cot–caught merger?

[Mr. Smith]

Nope.

[Mr. Smith]

Yes.

Nope.

Intriguing. What part of CA are you from? I’m from the Central Valley.

That'd be of no use to you, as I do not speak with the same characteristics as that region anymore, and haven't for almost a decade now when I left for college.

[Mr. Smith]

Obviously. Who doesn't? Southerners?

Most people in the South, the central Great Lakes region, and New York + the NYC metro area have them unmerged, where they pronounce the two words differently. Originally, the two words were always pronounced differently, however, this merger is a more recent phenomenon. Here is a map showing where the merger is most prevelent:




Very interesting findings here. If anyone cares, I have the merger, and I say the two words the same way.

So basically, all the states with actual linguistic taste, as opposed to the bland, monotonous, bleak, boring, robotic farce that passes for Midwest-to-Western American?  Got it!

[Mr. Smith]

They're the same, but the more important question is who actually uses the word "cot" anymore.

Yeah, should be called the "stock"-"stalk" merger for more relevancy.

[Mr. Smith]

I don't pronounce these two the same, but weirdly in spite of that I do pronounce the "aw" sound in "caught" and "coffee" pretty similarly. So it's not really that simple.

Well isn't that normal? I pronounce the au in caught as "aw" and the o in coffee as "aw" as well.

How else are they to be pronounced? Caht and cahfee?

Here's an example:

Cathy went camping with a friend, and his friend had a caht. If they went fishing, I dunno what they cawt.

[Mr. Smith]

Those three extra letters aren't there just to make spelling more difficult ..

Only two are.  If English had some mechanism to reform spelling, "caught" would be "caut".

The "gh" was pronounced back in the day and was pronounced like the German "ch".

I'm aware of that, but save for maybe a few very minor dialects, it's not pronounced now, so it shouldn't be in the spelling now.

English spelling is a crapshoot.

[Mr. Smith]

Those three extra letters aren't there just to make spelling more difficult ..

Only two are.  If English had some mechanism to reform spelling, "caught" would be "caut".

The "gh" was pronounced back in the day and was pronounced like the German "ch".

I'm aware of that, but save for maybe a few very minor dialects, it's not pronounced now, so it shouldn't be in the spelling now.

English spelling is a crapshoot.

Not quite, but it is something only a philologist could love.

Eh, pretty much.

I'm sure you know of the "ghoti" argument. Now is that supposed to be "gotty", "oat-ey", or "fishy?"