cot/caught on the street

[Tom Zurinskas]

During the US Open a commentator said that local folks lining up at the golf course in the early morning were called "the Don patrol"  (I assume he's an awe-dropper and meant "dawn")  I guess they wake up at the crack of Don.

Another instance, someone said, "He was ~laast (where aa = "ah")"  Could that be a Brit saying "last" or an awe-dropper saying "lost"?

For awe-droppers, all "awe" sounds become "ah" so RAWK AWN would have the "ah" vowel for both words and thus be ROCK ON where the vowel takes the "ah" sound.

Interestingly for "on" m-w.com gives the "awe" sound symbol first, but the speaker says "ah".
Main Entry: 1on
Pronunciation: \ˈȯn, ˈän\
I would think that "ah" would be the majority vowel in the word "on".

Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL5+
See truespel.com - and the 4 truespel books plus "Occasional Poems" at authorhouse.com.




> Date: Tue, 1 Jul 2008 07:03:25 -0700
> From: zwicky at CSLI.STANFORD.EDU
> Subject: cot/caught on the street
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: "Arnold M. Zwicky"
> Subject: cot/caught on the street
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> vanity license plate on a car parked in downtown palo alto yesterday:
>
> RAWK AWN
>
> presumably, the cot/caught merger, in favor of open-o. for me, it'd
> be RAHK AWN. but maybe the open-o appears only in this expression,
> under the influence of the vowel of "on".
>
> arnold
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
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