Distracted

If you are interested in dialect differences at all, you know that in some parts of the US people say "cot" and "caught" as homophones, while in other parts those vowels are distinct from each other. (I am emphatically in the distinct camp myself. Children's books that rhyme, say, "thought" and "hot" make me twitch. Those don't rhyme any more than "cute" and "put" do.) You may not know that around St. Louis they are aggressively collapsed, so much so that many people say "farty-far" instead of 44. (When you say "or" in most US dialects, you're actually saying "aw" + "er.")

This is a fact I have known for a long time, but tonight it caught me by surprise. I was at a prayer service led by a man from St. Louis. The psalm's antiphon turned into "the Lard is kind and merciful." I should know better, but I giggled to myself anyway. At least I didn't close in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Suet.