Do you have the cot–caught merger?

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

The cot–caught merger is a sound change present in some dialects of English where speakers do not distinguish the vowels in "cot" and "caught". Names like "cot–caught merger" and lot–thought merger come from the minimal pairs that are lost as a result of this sound change. The phonemes involved in the cot-caught merger are represented in the International Phonetic Alphabet as /ɒ/ and /ɔ/, respectively. These vowels are both low and back—as can be seen in the IPA chart—and is sometimes referred to as the low back merger. The father-bother merger that spread through North America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries has resulted in many dialects having no vowel difference in words like "father", "lot", and "thought".

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

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.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

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

How is that different?

In unmerged dialects, the "o" in cot and the "augh" in caught make two slightly different sounds. Specifically, they are the open back unrounded vowel (/ɑ/) and the open-mid back rounded vowel (/ɔ/), respectively. To put that in layman's terms, if you didn't have the merger, and you said "caught," your tongue would be higher up in the mouth than it would normally be, meanwhile the vowel sound in "cot" would have your tongue at the very bottom of your mouth.

Audio file of cot's vowel sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Open_back_unrounded_vowel.ogg
Audio file of caught's vowel sound: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:PR-open-mid_back_rounded_vowel.ogg

It can be very hard to distinguish from the two if you're like me and you have the merger, which it seems like you do, too.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

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.

It's alternatively called the "lot–thought" merger.

[KoopaDaQuick 🇵🇸]

Dang, never expected the results to be literally tied.