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Yankiwi17273 t1_j9wx2k7 wrote

Reply to comment by szyzk in Survey on Pennsylvania Dialect (“cot” and “caught”) by pretty_hooligan

I think I remember learning that the “cot-caught merger” (when they sound the same) is actually the younger pronunciation, and said merger is more popular the further west in the country you go, and the younger the speaker.

That said, I say those two words differently and I am young too.

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szyzk t1_j9wzx9y wrote

I'm going to start grilling my old college friends who are scattered around PA, my Lehigh Valley pals, and my family in the Harrisburg area about this. I can't say that I've heard any of them come close to approaching the New England-ish "aw" sound, and I've certainly never heard it here in western PA.

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Yankiwi17273 t1_j9x1tqh wrote

I mean, I don’t say it like a Bostonian would say “cwawfee”.

But for me, cot rhymes with hot, and the vowel in caught is like “law”. Just like “law” and “hot” have different vowel sounds for me, so do “caught” and “cot”.

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