szyzk t1_j9wzx9y wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:02 AM

Reply to comment by Yankiwi17273 in Survey on Pennsylvania Dialect (“cot” and “caught”) by pretty_hooligan

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.

Yankiwi17273 t1_j9x1tqh wrote on February 25, 2023 at 4:20 AM

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”.