Don ('oh' short vowel) and Dawn ('or' long) are different for me but ball/bawl basically the same. FYI, there was a running joke on the TV show Mad Men about two characters called Don and Dawn so I guess east coast Americans say them the same. ;-)

For non native speaker like me :) Don sounds like aaahh surrounded by a D and an n. Dawn sounds like aww surrounded by a D and an n.

Not wishing to digress from the original "don-dawn" question, here is nevertheless what the American Merriam-Webster Dictionary says: Merry - Pronunciation: \ˈmer-ē, ˈme-rē\ Marry - Pronunciation: \ˈmer-ē, ˈma-rē\ How do Americans actually pronounce these? I hope that Americans will come forward to enlighten us. A separate but allied question: "The British and people from the Commonwealth may regard the Queen as the ultimate living guide to correct pronunciation (now that the BBC has abdicated from this role). In the United States, who is the person or are the persons who fulfil this role?

I'm a native U.S. speaker from the Northeast. I pronounce "don" and "dawn" differently. However, I barely notice the difference when listening. I would understand the word effortlessly from context, and the pronunciation doesn't carry any strong regional or cultural overtones. For example, I can't tell you the regions of the U.S. where they are pronounced the same. I pronounce "ball" and "bawl" identically, and until you asked the question was not aware that anyone pronounced them differently.

I speak with the standard BBC British accent and whilst I'd pronounce both nouns (in both cases) using phonemes of identical value, I'd say 'Dawn' and 'bawl' with a bit of a longer vowel than 'Don' and 'ball'.