Why is the difference between these words in American English so subtle when it is made? I pronounce them the same, and can't even tell when Americans say them differently.
"cot" and "caught"
It's the caught-cot merger, where basically |ɔ| becomes |ɑ|.
Some study said that about 40% of americans have it.
Some study said that about 40% of americans have it.
That along with the father-bother merger every non NewEnglander American has makes for the majority of |ɔ| turned into |ɑ|.
It depends largely on where you live in America. I live in the northeast, near New York City, and I tend to find that older speakers distinguish the vowels in "cot" and "caught" more, while younger speakers pronounce them more similarly. (According to Wikipedia, my region of the country has nearly completely resisted the cot-caught merger.)
I would guess that it has something to do with mass media. Television is now extremely prevalent, and many people watch it for hours each day, so younger speakers from regions of America without the cot-caught merger are learning many words from people on television who do merge the vowels. This probably makes speakers pronounce the vowels in all affected words more similarly. Word learning from radio and music probably has a similar but smaller effect.
Also, most educational materials for teaching American children to read English are designed to be mostly accurate for all American accents, rather than completely accurate for just one. They tend not discuss the orthographical conventions for indicating /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. (I.e. /ɔ/ can be "aw", "au", "augh", "al" as in "talk", or "og" as in "dog", although the vowel difference between "dog" and "dot" is much less than that between "cot" and "caught"; anything else that represents a low back vowel is typically /ɑ/.) A program that insisted that the letters in "caught" and "cot" represent two different vowels would be extremely confusing to children who pronounce them the same. It's better to just say that everything represents /ɑ/ or a similar vowel, and it will usually be close enough so that students that pronounce /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ differently can figure it out. This means, though, that as students learn new words with /ɑ/ or /ɔ/ from reading, they will tend to pronounce them with /ɑ/.
(To illustrate the above point: Ten years ago, my first-grade teacher used a phonics program that claimed that "wine" and "whine" had different initial consonants /w/ and /ʍ/; it said, " 'wh' is like a whisper." I already knew that "whisper" was spelled with "wh" and that everybody pronounced it like "wisper"; this was confusing to me, but the fact that the phonics program insisted that "wh" and "w" represented two different consonants, when nobody in the class used the "wh" sound, was still confusing enough to everybody. On the other hand, I never remember learning about "augh" or "aw" or "au" as representing a sound different from the one in "cot", or "bother" or "got" or anything similar, even though my region of the country has not undergone the cot-caught merger.)
The basic idea is that Americans never explicitly learn the difference between "cot" and "caught", even if they do (strictly speaking) lack the cot-caught merger or come from a region of the country were most people lack it, and they tend to pronounce newly learned words with /ɔ/ as having /ɑ/ instead. This means that Americans will learn a larger and larger number of words as having /ɑ/, and a small and fixed number with /ɔ/. Under these circumstances (which, of course, will be aided if speakers without the cot-caught merger regularly talk to those who do), it is hardly surprising that most Americans will pronounce /ɔ/ as closer and closer to /ɑ/.
I would guess that it has something to do with mass media. Television is now extremely prevalent, and many people watch it for hours each day, so younger speakers from regions of America without the cot-caught merger are learning many words from people on television who do merge the vowels. This probably makes speakers pronounce the vowels in all affected words more similarly. Word learning from radio and music probably has a similar but smaller effect.
Also, most educational materials for teaching American children to read English are designed to be mostly accurate for all American accents, rather than completely accurate for just one. They tend not discuss the orthographical conventions for indicating /ɑ/ and /ɔ/. (I.e. /ɔ/ can be "aw", "au", "augh", "al" as in "talk", or "og" as in "dog", although the vowel difference between "dog" and "dot" is much less than that between "cot" and "caught"; anything else that represents a low back vowel is typically /ɑ/.) A program that insisted that the letters in "caught" and "cot" represent two different vowels would be extremely confusing to children who pronounce them the same. It's better to just say that everything represents /ɑ/ or a similar vowel, and it will usually be close enough so that students that pronounce /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ differently can figure it out. This means, though, that as students learn new words with /ɑ/ or /ɔ/ from reading, they will tend to pronounce them with /ɑ/.
(To illustrate the above point: Ten years ago, my first-grade teacher used a phonics program that claimed that "wine" and "whine" had different initial consonants /w/ and /ʍ/; it said, " 'wh' is like a whisper." I already knew that "whisper" was spelled with "wh" and that everybody pronounced it like "wisper"; this was confusing to me, but the fact that the phonics program insisted that "wh" and "w" represented two different consonants, when nobody in the class used the "wh" sound, was still confusing enough to everybody. On the other hand, I never remember learning about "augh" or "aw" or "au" as representing a sound different from the one in "cot", or "bother" or "got" or anything similar, even though my region of the country has not undergone the cot-caught merger.)
The basic idea is that Americans never explicitly learn the difference between "cot" and "caught", even if they do (strictly speaking) lack the cot-caught merger or come from a region of the country were most people lack it, and they tend to pronounce newly learned words with /ɔ/ as having /ɑ/ instead. This means that Americans will learn a larger and larger number of words as having /ɑ/, and a small and fixed number with /ɔ/. Under these circumstances (which, of course, will be aided if speakers without the cot-caught merger regularly talk to those who do), it is hardly surprising that most Americans will pronounce /ɔ/ as closer and closer to /ɑ/.
I should mention, again, that this is just a guess by someone without any actual phonological training at why American English speakers without the cot-caught merger still pronounce the two vowels as almost the same.
i think the difference is subtle especially for those who are merged, cause we dont even imagining sounding them different, where for those that never have, the subtlety is noticeable.
I don't know why people use [ ɔ: ] for the vowel of caught in American English. It is not the same sound as for example - Italian short, open [ ɔ ]. For American accents It should be transcribed [ ɒ ] or [ ɑ ] , with the exception of New York English where it is usally [o:] .
Due to Hollywood influence, the merger is spreading, now most of Texas and Florida are cot-caught merged, as well as central and southern Ohio/Indiana and northern parts of New York state (next to merged Vermont).
If you listen to Lady Gaga, she sounds more South Californian than like a NewYorker. She has a conservative SoCal accent, and not the pseudoaccent: ValleyGirlese.
@John: That's basically what I was saying: that the merger is spreading because Americans in non-merger areas, due to mass media, hear more and more English from Americans in merged areas.
Again, even though I live in a region that has resisted the merger completely, the difference between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ in my own speech is so subtle that they seemed to me the same - I was surprised to discover that there was a difference.
Again, even though I live in a region that has resisted the merger completely, the difference between /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ in my own speech is so subtle that they seemed to me the same - I was surprised to discover that there was a difference.
>>I don't know why people use [ ɔ: ] for the vowel of caught in American English. It is not the same sound as for example - Italian short, open [ ɔ ]. For American accents It should be transcribed [ ɒ ] or [ ɑ ] , with the exception of New York English where it is usally [o:] . <<
The New Yorker version is more like the diphthong [ɔə] formed from that open Italian vowel followed by a schwa sound.
The more closed and long [o:] sounds more British.
The New Yorker version is more like the diphthong [ɔə] formed from that open Italian vowel followed by a schwa sound.
The more closed and long [o:] sounds more British.
The most bizarre are near-merged or partially merged people:
caught - cot [kɑt]
Dawn - don [dɑn]
but
caller ['kɔlər]
collar ['kɑlər]
It does not make any sense.
caught - cot [kɑt]
Dawn - don [dɑn]
but
caller ['kɔlər]
collar ['kɑlər]
It does not make any sense.
Or even people who say the vowel in ''Dawn'' is different than the one in ''Don'' but they pronounce them exactly the same ;)
You probably don't notice the difference because both pronunciations fall into your mental definition of a single phoneme.
When I asked a co-worker if he was from Canada, he asked how I was able to figure that out. I said it was because he said "dɔlər". He asked me to say it the way an American would say it and I said "dɑlər". After I repeated the pronunciations a couple of additional times and most likely even exaggerated the difference for the sake of contrast, he said he could hear that what I said was different, but it was still the same sound.
I agree with what some others said about the merger spreading, but, to my ears, it does not manifest the same in all parts of the country. Some of my younger relatives in Texas definitely have the merger, but the sounds have become allophones, with ɑ before n, d, and t and ɔ elsewhere. (My younger, merged relatives even tend to say "dɔlər" or a close approximation.) When I hear people from the Western U.S. with the merger they tend to use ɑ in relatively more situations, as in "cross" and "law" and "dog".
From Connor:
"The basic idea is that Americans never explicitly learn the difference between "cot" and "caught", even if they do (strictly speaking) lack the cot-caught merger or come from a region of the country were most people lack it, and they tend to pronounce newly learned words with /ɔ/ as having /ɑ/ instead. This means that Americans will learn a larger and larger number of words as having /ɑ/, and a small and fixed number with /ɔ/. "
I agree that this does seem to be the case, and one prominent example I can think of is the word "Astronaut", which is a new word, relatively speaking, that most people pronounce as Astro-Not, even if they use ɔ in words like "nautical".
When I asked a co-worker if he was from Canada, he asked how I was able to figure that out. I said it was because he said "dɔlər". He asked me to say it the way an American would say it and I said "dɑlər". After I repeated the pronunciations a couple of additional times and most likely even exaggerated the difference for the sake of contrast, he said he could hear that what I said was different, but it was still the same sound.
I agree with what some others said about the merger spreading, but, to my ears, it does not manifest the same in all parts of the country. Some of my younger relatives in Texas definitely have the merger, but the sounds have become allophones, with ɑ before n, d, and t and ɔ elsewhere. (My younger, merged relatives even tend to say "dɔlər" or a close approximation.) When I hear people from the Western U.S. with the merger they tend to use ɑ in relatively more situations, as in "cross" and "law" and "dog".
From Connor:
"The basic idea is that Americans never explicitly learn the difference between "cot" and "caught", even if they do (strictly speaking) lack the cot-caught merger or come from a region of the country were most people lack it, and they tend to pronounce newly learned words with /ɔ/ as having /ɑ/ instead. This means that Americans will learn a larger and larger number of words as having /ɑ/, and a small and fixed number with /ɔ/. "
I agree that this does seem to be the case, and one prominent example I can think of is the word "Astronaut", which is a new word, relatively speaking, that most people pronounce as Astro-Not, even if they use ɔ in words like "nautical".
These mergers, would they pronounce with an /ɑ/ words such as walk and taught and strong? And do some of them use it in "nautical" too? Do some even pronounce all /ɔ/s that way?