By House Linguist Brennan Nick

In case you did not know, the people of Shakespeare’s time spoke much differently than we do today. If someone in Shakespeare’s time came today and spoke to you, you may only be able to understand about 75% of what they are saying. However, the year 1600 was “only” about ten generations ago. Now, I personally do not feel like I speak much differently from my parents, let alone Shakespeare. Besides, there have been massive enunciation shifts from Shakespeare’s time to now. So I wondered, what massive sound changes are going on right now?

 

Well, one thing that I learned very recently is the fact that some people pronounce the words “cot” and “caught” differently, while an increasing number of people pronounce them the same. This is called the cot-caught merger. This blew my mind when I learned this because I never realized that we were experiencing sound shifts right now. The difference is between the “aw,” “au,” “al,” and “ought” sounds and the short “o” sounds. The difference can be seen in words like . . .

–“cot” and “caught,”

–”collar” and “caller,”

–”stock” and “stalk,”

–”chock” and “chalk,”

–and ”don” and “dawn.”

 

It used to be that everyone made a distinction between the two different vowel sounds. However, people are increasingly pronouncing those vowel sounds the same. This shift is occurring the most in the Greater Pittsburgh Area and West Virginia, the New England Area, and the entire western half of the USA, with some exceptions such as San Francisco (See map).

With this knowledge, I then decided to collect some data on who pronounced the vowel sounds the same way and who pronounced them differently. So, I went around to many people here in Southern California and had them say these words:

“Rock cot talk rob stalk water

Call stock caught doll also”*

*Unbolded = “cot” sound for all words

Bold = Both “cot” and “caught” sounds used

 

Here is what I found:

People who did make a distinction: 10

People who did not make a distinction: 27

 

Even though I got the data, I still wanted to find some characteristic that determined who made a distinction and who did not. Age did not have to do with it, as there were both teachers and students who made the distinction and did not. What I found to be the greatest determiner was whether or not they were from California or if they were from elsewhere.

 

People who made a distinction and are not from California–8.

People who made a distinction and are from California–2.

People who did not make a distinction and are not from California–7.

People who did not make a distinction and are from California–20.

 

This can be explained by the fact that, in California, the two vowel sounds are merged by most people; whereas the two vowels are largely unmerged in many other areas of the country.

 

All in all, this was a fun experiment.

 

Below is a video where you can “hear” the difference for yourself.

Editor: Leo Milmet