There is a severe misconception that Americans pronounce the "augh" in "caught" as /O:/. Think about it this way: if the word "bore" is pronounced /bO:r/ (and this is wrong too, it should actually be /bo:r/), and if "bought" is prnounced /bO:t/, then technically "bore" should be "bought" with an /r/ instead of a /t/ at the end, and "bought" should be "bore" with an /t/ at the end instead of an /r/. Are they? Not even close. The correct ponetic transcription of "caught" should be /kQ_ct/ (with a low back rounded, less rounded) for modern American English, or /kQ@t/ for some northern American dialects (New York, New Jersey, Philadelphia). -Jordan
From what I understand, the caught-cot merger describes that Americans use similar, but not equal, vowels in the words "cot" and "caught." In British English, these words are pronounced /kQt/ and /kOt/. In modern American English, these words are pronounced with much more similar sounds: /kAt/ and /kQt/. Listen as I pronounce "cot" and "caught" using the vowels [A] and [Q]:
http://www.geocities.com/jordanekay/cotcaught.wav
We do not pronounce "caught" with an [O]. Do we say this:
http://www.geocities.com/jordanekay/caught.wav
Absolutely not.
And about "bought" and "bore" having the same vowel sound, again, if you believe that to be true after hearing these words pronounced,
http://www.geocities.com/jordanekay/boughtbore.wav
you need to get your ears checked.
I pronounce bought and bore with the same vowel /o:/ and I'm from New York.
Well, I for one at least pronounce them all as:
"cot" : /kAt/ --> [k_hA?]
"caught" : /kOt/ --> [k_hO?]
"bought" : /bOt/ --> [bO?]
"bore" : /bor/ --> [bo:r\]
You shouldn't make overly firm pronouncements about how Americans speak in general, as you seem to be making overly broad generalizations about American English has a whole here. For starters, there is a very large portion of the US population which doesn't have the cot-caught merger at all.
Another note is that /Q/ simply does not exist as a phoneme in the dialect which is spoken here in Wisconsin, nor does it exist in my view at least of formal Northern Central American English, which is basically what "General American English" is based off of. I know of no distinction at all between /O/ and /Q/, phonemically, in such, for that matter.
There is no phonemic distinction between /Q/ and /O/ here in New England.
<<From what I understand, the caught-cot merger describes that Americans use similar, but not equal, vowels in the words "cot" and "caught.">>
I guess you don't understand what the cot-caught merger is. Most Americans do not have this merger. If you have it, then you pronounce "cot" and "caught" *identically*. If you pronounce "cot" as /kAt/ and you pronounce "caught" as /kQt/, /kOt/, or anything else, then you are *not* cot-caught merged, however close the two vowels may be.
I pronounce them:
caught - /kOt/
cot - /kOt/
^ That's the Eastern New England cot-caught merger.
bought - /bOt/
bore - /bor/
As noted by Lazar, the "cot-caught merger" is a limited phenomenon in North America; most Americans still distinguish these vowels, although the exact vowels they use may vary slightly.
It's not really worth worrying about. Vowels tend to merge or become confused when they occur in positions that form very few minimal pairs. In other words, the less necessary a particular difference in vowels is for comprehension, the more they tend to drift. And for the same reason, vowels that drift in this way are not worth worrying to much about, because nobody is really going to care _which_ of the several common distinctions you make. Unless you need to adopt a specific accent with 100% precision, these questions are largely moot.
The important sounds are the ones that serve to distinguish meaning in a large number of cases. These sounds drift far less than the ones described above, and it is far more important to learn to recognize and produce them.
All phonemes serve to distinguish meaning in certain contexts, by definition, but all phonemes are not equal. Some are extremely important because they occur so often (/i/ vs. /I/, for example), whereas others are of far less importance (/T/ vs. /D/, for example).
50 % of Americans merge COT and CAUGHT.
And young people in ''transitional areas'' do the same. (S. Francisco, for example, young people there have the CCmerger, but old speakers do not)
CC merger is spreading...No one will escape, eventually. :)
Even in the Great Lakes area, many people pronounce CAUGHT like [ka:t], but their COT is something like General-American CAT.
So, CAUGHT will be always pronounced like [ka:t], but Northern Cities shift changes the vowel in COT that becomes [kaet] (=CAT)
I am so happy my favorite actors are CCmerged (Jim Carey & Kate Winslet in ''Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind'' :p)
I've read varying statistics on the percentage of Americans with the "cot-caught" merger, but as of now it probably is around half the country that has it (some are also "transitional," as has been mentioned before). I can personally attest to the San Francisco case, generally the exception in the "cot-caught" merged Western US dialects--I had a middle-aged professor last quarter who was born and raised (and a third generation) San Franciscan with clear "cot-caught" differentiation (so much so that he sounded what I would think of as "East Coast"...obviously an East Coast variety without the merger, of course). However, the people my age I know that grew up in San Francisco (and I know plenty) are completely "cot-caught" merged as is the overwhelming norm in California.
While there is evidence the merger is spreading, especially amongst younger speakers in the US, most experts on the issue seem to agree it won't affect all US speakers, as certain vowel shifts are under way in certain areas of the country that are apparently conditioned to keep the distinction (I won't go into the technical details of these arguments, but it makes sense).
Also, just because people may have the "cot-caught" merger does not necessarily indicate how they produce the merged vowel. It's commonly [A], but may approach [O], and in Lazar's dialect, for example, both "cot" and "caught" are merged as full [O]. As I've said before, I'm completely "cot-caught" merged and the vowel I produce in those cases can range anywhere from [A] to a higher, slightly more rounded vowel...in some cases approaching [O].
"Northern Central American English"
I know this is off-topic, and I bring it up a lot, but could it be called "Northern Central US English" instead? Otherwise it sounds like it refers to Belize English or something.
Yeah, I know; I just have been using the term as I've read it in use, and also because all the other sorts of American English usually use the term "American English" not "US English".
I'm a little confused here, my book on American English pronunciation says that: "British English has a three-way distinction between /A, O, Q/ whereas in American English [Q] is an allophone of either /A/ or /O/, and the distinction between part and pot, which is maintained by the vowel in BE, is maintained by the presence vs. absence of /r/ in AE:
part /pAt/ (BE), /pArt/ (AE); pot /pQt/ (BE), /pAt/ (AE)."
So is Q "unnecessary" in American English? Are there any minimal pairs between /Q/ and /A/ or /Q/ and /O/? Are there people who don't use /Q/ at all?
Yes, I guess you'd say /Q/ is unnecessary. No American dialect (to my knowledge) makes the three-way vowel distinction that RP does. Here's my nifty chart of vowel correspondences between RP and North American dialects:
General American:
/O:/ ---> /O/
/Q/ ---> /A/
/A:/ ---> /A/
Eastern New England:
/O:/ ---> /O/
/Q/ ---> /O/
/A:/ ---> /A/
Western American:
/O:/ ---> /A/
/Q/ ---> /A/
/A:/ ---> /A/
I have the Western American features of that above nifty chart and there's rarely, if ever, cause for confusion, just like in nonrhotic BrE there's rarely cause for confusion between "father/farther" even tho they sound the same in that dialect.
I use the "General American" mappings normally, even though sometimes when talking very informally and quickly, /O/ will become /A/ in my speech, which I tend to notice and to try to avoid, not because of any prescriptivist ideas or like, but more due to trying to deliberately preserve certain dialectal distinctions (similar to intentionally avoiding the use of "y'all" while specifically favoring "you guys").
As far as I know, Pittsburgh and surrounding areas share the Eastern New England cot-caught merger pronunciation:
/O:/ ---> /O/
/Q/ ---> /O/
/A:/ ---> /A/
as opposed to the Western U.S. pronunciation in which all have merged to become /A/.