which? where? witch? whale?

I've been all over the place for the past few days. Apologies.

Last night I was hanging out with Dylan and Genevieve being generally studious. The two of them were both doing math I think, and I was doing my linguistics reading. The problem with doing linguistics reading is that a solid amount of that reading needs to be done aloud, at least in the phonetics section.

Me: You guys, do the words 'which' and 'witch' sound different to you? They're spelled differently phonetically... the W has two different letters...

Genevieve: Which... witch... which...

Me: The 'which' is supposed to sound more like 'where', whereas the 'witch' is supposed to sound more like 'with'. Is this making any sense?

Apparently the two sound different in different dialects of american english. I can't say I've heard these other dialects.

Me: You guys... do pot and bought rhyme?

Dylan: Yes?

Me: They say no.

I've got this weird paranoia now that I've been speaking english with vague and inaccurate pronunciations for my entire life.

Whatever. I know what rhymes with what.

But which W was used there? Or in that 'which'?

I'm sticking to "that" from now on, given the choice. These Ws are crazy.

Love always,

Clara