i am a speaker of the northern new jersey dialect of american english. i have a distinction between cot and caught, and i say orange and forest with a low, back, unrounded vowel. i have no contrast between mary, marry, and merry, and i have a diphthong for the first vowel of coffee. speakers of other dialects are often amused by my pronunciation of the sentence morrissey put water in the coffee pot.

i also live with a cat. his name is chuck, and he rather enjoys sleeping in windowsills and cardboard boxes. chuck is also quite fond of sleeping on top of whatever linguistics paper i happen to be reading at the time.

this is chuck.