Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 01:58 GMT
Yeah, I've seen figures stating that between 40-50% of Americans do have the "cot-caught" merger, as american nic and I do. It can be kind of hard to measure in some cases because some speakers are known as "transitional," in that they may have the merger in some cases but not others where it would be expected, or the two are produced similarly--not close enough to be called merged but apparently too close to be considered separate...a strange limbo zone, almost.
Anyway, whatever the stastics are on the tally of Americans who have the merger, "cot-caught" merged speech is what I almost exclusively hear daily, and I grew up thinking everyone did this (before I knew much about phonetics and American English phonology I remember being really frustrated by a introductory linguistics book that claimed most Americans didn't merge "cot-caught" while most Canadians did...I was highly confused--my thinking went, "I'm surely an American, and, doesn't everyone say them exactly the same?" haha).
Anyway, whatever the stastics are on the tally of Americans who have the merger, "cot-caught" merged speech is what I almost exclusively hear daily, and I grew up thinking everyone did this (before I knew much about phonetics and American English phonology I remember being really frustrated by a introductory linguistics book that claimed most Americans didn't merge "cot-caught" while most Canadians did...I was highly confused--my thinking went, "I'm surely an American, and, doesn't everyone say them exactly the same?" haha).