> "A" as in the "au" in "caught"
Not an expert, but I can't offhand think of a language where this is even approximately how a is pronounced—which ones are you thinking of?
Not an expert, but I can't offhand think of a language where this is even approximately how a is pronounced—which ones are you thinking of?
I'd say a good first guess is the "a" in "about" instead.
Our parents, who were born in the 1920s, both made the cot/caught distinction. Our mother was from the midwest, but our father grew up in the same Southern California city as we did. This suggested to me that, with respect to at least this one phonemic distinction, our language acquisition was influenced more by our peers than by our parents.
I should note that my sisters and I were initially flabbergasted that anyone pronounced those words differently and had trouble hearing the difference, while our parents were upset to learn that we pronounced them the same.
* French: "pas"
* Italian: "casa"
* Mandarin (written using pinyin): "bàng"
* German: "katze"
* Japanes (written in romaji): "arigato"
* Bahasa Indonesia: "bahasa"
Note that the sounds in these various languages are not exactly the same, but the "au" in "caught" is the closest sound in the native phonological inventory of a General American speaker (given said speaker pronounces "caught" and "cot" differently).
Also, if I listen to the audio examples at https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger then it's exactly the other way around, that the "merged" pronunciation seems like an appropriate representation of "a" in words like Italian "casa", with "non-merged" "cought" sounding very different from that?
I personally have the merger, and so I misunderstood which direction the split went.
This too can be looked up