oh you must say vowels somewhat differently than i do. for me those words have quite different vowels from each other
my best guess from looking up vowel mergers is that you're australian and have the golf-gulf merger
nope hehe, I am actually from east coast US, but maybe it's a dialect thing here?
the first syllable of “salsa”
compensate for the “a” by saying “false-uh” like a southern preacher.