As far as Latin alphabet approximates, I'd say "aw" is pretty perfect. Because I think most accents will pronounce "thought" as if you add a t to "thaw". It's just that what that means in terms of the actual articulation varies a lot.

So, Americans with the cot-caught merger will pronounce it with the "cot" vowel, which is what I was trying to get across. UK/Aus/NZ don't all pronounce it the same as each other, but do for the most part pronounce it with the same vowel as they would use for the word "or". And "thaw", in our non-rhotic accents, is the same as Thor.

So "aw" works either way. Nice find!

[–] Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Pretty sure "caught" won and "cot" lost in the caught-cot merger. I don't think most Americans would conceive of it as an "o" sound

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

When I hear an American with the caught/cot merger say "caught", it sounds way more similar to my (unmerged) "cot" than my "caught"

[–] Silentiea@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 3 months ago (1 children)

I believe you. I meant more that it "won" conceptually than phonetically. To an American ear it sounds more like "aw" or "ah" than "o".

[–] Zagorath@aussie.zone 1 points 3 months ago

Oh yeah, maybe. I don't really know how you'd measure that.