Via War and Peas
Never heard anyone from the US say twot and and not tw@
Maybe because of the GTAIV Internet cafe lol
Interesting. I know of at least one crude joke that relies on the pronunciation rhyming with cot - I read it in text form and was unable to make any sense of it.
Unrelatedly, I’ve been watching a lot of Steamed Hams videos lately, so now I’m thinking things like “Not in Utica, no. It’s an Albany expression”.
Clearly there must be some places that use the cot pronunciation. Maybe even a few over here in the UK. Similarly though, I’m not aware of any.
Or maybe it fell out of use in the US and the UK pronunciation has gained traction over there among a younger generation. Wouldn’t be the first time that happened, one way or the other across the Atlantic.
The word was never commonly used when I was growing up, but I remember thinking it rhymed with cot - it threw me off when the Great Mighty Poo rhymed it with “scat”.
Part of the problem might also be that not everywhere pronounces cot the same. See the cot-caught merger. I’m from a part of the US where cot and caught are still pronounced differently and I pronounce twat like cot, both with a short a sound.
What’s the joke?
I don’t think the cot/caught merger would be a problem, though I suppose it’s not impossible that in places in the US with the merger, the word in question always rhymes with cat.
As for the joke, one telling can be found here: A dwarf and a horse