If you say that to me, you say nothing. As a description of a sound, "aw" has no useful meaning. It seems pretty clear to me that Richard means that your "ah" sounds like a vowel that, if he himself said it, he would prefer to

If you say that to me, you say nothing. As a description of a sound, "aw" has no useful meaning. It seems pretty clear to me that Richard means that your "ah" sounds like a vowel that, if he himself ... speech), but he is

Indeed, that's what we CINCs have been saying all along: your "ah" sounds like "aw" to us. If you say that to me, you say nothing. As a description of a sound, "aw" has no useful meaning. It seems pretty clear to

I think all of your cot/caught vowels sound like normative CINC AmE "aw". Suddenly you're throwing around this word "normative", which means about the same as "prescriptive". No one can be rightfully prescribing

If I want you to use the vowel of your ... order to accomplish that? What would you suggest I write? Before I made a suggestion, I would want to be persuaded that there was some good reason for you to want me to use a vowel when you don't know

In my kind of talk, in the sense you mention, ... clearly, a schwa replaces the vowel. "I k'n gowith you". Do you have the "pin"/"pen" merger? (If so, where are you from?) If youdo, your "kin"

"Ersters" is definitely rhoticized in the Fred and Ginger version. I guess I was too tired to waffle, and I suppose it's possible that the Gershwins really did mean something ... they couldn't spell otherwise, something like

Fonzie, might I convince you to help me raise objections to linguists' blithe and insulting decision to use the word "Philadelphia" to refer to the entire Upper Chesapeake pronunciation region? You think I don't know? I tell them

To me American pronunciations of "cot" generally sound either a ... of an American accent has something close to my "cat". I have a typical American accent. When you listen to my pronunciation of "caught" which is the

No, but there are some who pronouce both "cot" and ... help him by suggesting the Zulu word "ithole" - "calf". That's a separate issue, innit? The vast majority of Americans use the "cat" vowel