Cot-caught merger

Image courtesy: rockysmith.net

I was browsing when I came across this short bio of the author of the post I was reading. He had mentioned that he is battling with the "cot-caught merger." I was intrigued by the phrase and I looked it up. It's a neat little nugget of understanding. The cot-caught merger, or the low back merger in linguistics, is a minor but glaring loss of a vowel or a phonological difference that sets apart American speakers from certain parts of the country from the rest of the world. Simply put, they pronounce cot and caught in the same way, losing the "aw" sound, and there is no way to tell the distinction apart from the context. Many Americans say "kaat" for both the words while the distinction should be "kaat" for cot and "kawt" for caught. This is the phonetic difference -  /ɑ/ (words like cot, pause) and /ɔ/ (words like caught, paw).

Now, obviously the British don't face these problems because they are very clear about their pronunciation. But how about us Indians? I realized we have a similar problem. We pronounce cot and caught in the same way too. Except that we pronounce both as "kawt." How do we even get over it without sounding like we are trying to put on an accent. If we go the American way we sound completely out of place and if we go the British way nobody will understand us here in India. Imagine going to a furniture shop and saying, "I would like buy that "koot." Well, at least we don't have the trap-bath split. More on that in the next post.

Check out the different pronunciations of "caught."