Do you pronounce ''cot'' and ''caught'' the same?

Oops the second should say
cot=cart

What is this palatalazing your talking about?? Does it have something to do with /j/, a palatal approximant? Why do you use the S-symbol for it, I don't think the S-sound (as in "ship") has anything to do with palatal pronunciation, being a voiceless postalveolar fricative. Is there a site or something where I could actually hear the difference so that I would understand what you mean?

Oh, yeah, we are talking about the voiceless postalveolar affricate [tS] as in "chip". I was also using XSAMPA exclusively on my post, not antimoon's system. Another correction, on my followup post I erroneously included "try" as one of the ones getting [tSr] in my speech, when I use [tr] there, as in my original post.

[hæpi seI~? pæ4iz deI Evriw@n]....!

Palatalization is simply taking any given sound, and making it /closer to/ being palatal. For fricatives this usually entails replacing them with another fricative that is closer to being palatal, but for stops this often (but not always) entails turning them into affricates, with the stop component being the original stop, but the fricative component being another fricative that is closer to being palatal than the original stop.

Examples of this include:
[s] => [S]
[z] => [Z]
[t] => [tS]
[d] => [dZ]
[k] => [c]
[x] => [C]
[n] => [J]
[l] => [L]

Jim, are you from the Boston area? It seems from your accent you are from around there. Now that I've been sounding out all sorts of cot/caught type sounds, I notice that although I pronounce them the same, if there's an 'n' or 'ng' after the vowel, it changes a little...

No, I'm from Sydney, Australia but that's interesting that people from Boston would talk like us.

LOL, sorry about that little Boston/Sydney mix-up, I just sounded out how I thought you pronounced those words based on what you consider homophones. It sounded quite a bit like a Bostonian accent, not Aussie. That's cool.

That's interesting, because I've heard of Californians making the opposite mistake: thinking a Boston accent was Australian.

That's all right Nic but it is interesting though.