fellow solder?

[GoesStation]

In the US, "solder" sounds like "saw-der."

Not to me. You and I are evidently on opposite sides of the cot-caught merger.

 

[SoothingDave]

I am so far behind the cot-caught merger that I am at the towel-tile merger.

 

[Rover_KE]

I seem to have wandered into The Twilight Zone.:-?

 

[GoesStation]

I am so far behind the cot-caught merger that I am at the towel-tile merger.

Wow, right next door to the flour-flyer merger and on the same block as the fire-fair merger!

 

[emsr2d2]

I seem to have wandered into The Twilight Zone.:-?

I'm right next to you!

 

[GoesStation]

These mergers are cases where people with certain accents pronounce pairs of words the same, while others pronounce them differently. (And yes, significant numbers of people in the Appalachians pronounce fair and fire the same.) I had a history teacher who pronounced empire such that I heard "empower". The fact that when she said empower, I heard "empire" did not even the score.

 

[emsr2d2]

Oh, I understood the point! It just felt like the Twilight Zone because in BrE, none of those pairs of words sound the same.

 

[SoothingDave]

Merry-marry-Mary is another case of words merging for some (like me), but not others.

The typical joke about a Texan is that you can't tell if he has come from afar or a fire.

https://motivatedgrammar.wordpress.com/2010/07/07/poetry-in-pittsburghese/

And, I'm not kidding about "tile" and "towel." This link shows a bad poem that rhymes "smile" with "towel." Because they do rhyme. At least to me and my peculiar dialect.