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<blockquote data-quote="tarchon" data-source="post: 1867202" data-attributes="member: 5990">There are some dialects in which they're not distinct, but I haven't encountered that in Cali among Anglo native speakers (it's more rural and Southern and Hispanic).&nbsp; It's fairly common for second-language speakers not to be able to perceive or articulate the difference though (/æ/ is a fairly unusual vowel in international terms), and often second-generation speakers have trouble with it because their parents or ethnic communities don't make the distinction.&nbsp; Part of the reason that the distinction tends to get lost is that the vowel /æ/ (&quot;hat&quot;,&quot;cat&quot;,&quot;than&quot;... - note that this is the phoneme /æ/ - &quot;than&quot; and &quot;cat&quot; usually have different allophones, pronunciations) is often distinguished partly by nasalization, but the /n/ tends to nasalize preceding vowels (the extent of this is dialect dependent), so the contrast between short &quot;en&quot; and short &quot;an&quot; can become fairly subtle.&nbsp; It seems to me that dialects noted for strong nasalization (e.g. North Midlands, especially the western Great Lakes) have a greater tendency to preserve it.Cot/caught is another vowel pair that may or may not be distinct, depending on dialect, and the merger is a common trait of Western dialects.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="tarchon, post: 1867202, member: 5990"] There are some dialects in which they're not distinct, but I haven't encountered that in Cali among Anglo native speakers (it's more rural and Southern and Hispanic). It's fairly common for second-language speakers not to be able to perceive or articulate the difference though (/æ/ is a fairly unusual vowel in international terms), and often second-generation speakers have trouble with it because their parents or ethnic communities don't make the distinction. Part of the reason that the distinction tends to get lost is that the vowel /æ/ ("hat","cat","than"... - note that this is the phoneme /æ/ - "than" and "cat" usually have different allophones, pronunciations) is often distinguished partly by nasalization, but the /n/ tends to nasalize preceding vowels (the extent of this is dialect dependent), so the contrast between short "en" and short "an" can become fairly subtle. It seems to me that dialects noted for strong nasalization (e.g. North Midlands, especially the western Great Lakes) have a greater tendency to preserve it. Cot/caught is another vowel pair that may or may not be distinct, depending on dialect, and the merger is a common trait of Western dialects. [/QUOTE]

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