# the "o" sounds



## aleksk

I'm not sure if this has been discussed before, but I was wondering if somebody could briefly explain how many different "o" sounds there are in German and how they differ. For example, is the difference between the "o" sounds in "Morgen" and "Brot" only in length, or is the former more open than the latter as well? Or is it vice versa? They're represented with different symbols in the IPA, but I'm really not sure how to make the difference when speaking. According to a book I have, the "o" in Morgen is similar to the "o" sound in the English "got", but more closed? That's the only clue I got. 


Do you make the difference between these sounds in speech by way of length or by positioning the mouth in a different way?


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## Suilan

Generally, there are only two "o" sounds in German, the short o as in Sonne (similar to British pronunciation of ton) or Fagott (cf. British p. of got) and the long variant, as in Brot, Fohlen, mogeln. 

Your example of "morgen" isn't a good example when it comes to clarifying the quality of the o-sound, because the "r" interferes with the o here. The "r" is realized very differently by native speakers. Often, the "r" itself is pronounced as a vowel ("a-schwa"), merging with the o-sound into a diphtong: /'mo6-g@n/ 

There is another minor variation between /o/ and /o:/ but this involves only the length of the vowel, not the sound quality.

Stress in German is not, as even many natives believe, realized by loudness, but by vowel length. So you have Fohlen  /'fo:-l@n/ but Oman /o-'ma:n/ The longer vowel is always part of the stressed syllable.


P.S. I'm using the SAMPA notation. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAMPA_chart)


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## Suilan

The same is true for the vowels e, i, and u:

-e-

Bett /'bEt/ vs. egal /e-'ga:l/ vs. beten /'be:-t@n/
except that there is a fourth even-shorter-than E sound which only occurs in unstressed syllables, the schwa @.

-i-

Bitte /'bI-t@/ vs. Bitumen /bi-'tu:-m@n/ vs. bieten /'bi:-t@n/

-u-

Butter /'bU-t6/ vs. Butan /bu-'ta:n/ vs. Boule /'bu:l/

Merely the a differs from this rule. The difference in sound quality between e.g. Ball /'bal/ and Baal /'ba:l/ is considerably smaller than with the other 4 vowels.


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## aleksk

Well, I'm glad to hear there are only two according to a native speaker. Because in the book I mentioned, there are symbols for 5 different "o" sounds. There are both short and long *open* "o" sounds, as well as short and long *closed* "o" sounds, and there is a symbol for some sort of a nasal "o" sound, which makes things very complicated.


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## Suilan

Of course, the /O/s in "soll" and "Tom" don't sound exactly the same, because the vowel quality is always influenced by the surrounding nouns. This is called coarticulation.

Meaning: your tongue takes a certain time moving from the /s/ via /O/ to /l/ (while the air flow from your larynx continues) so that the resulting /O/-sound differs from the one produced by your tongue moving form /t/ via /O/ toward /m/ -- the /O/ in Tom would sound just a little nasal, because it is followed by a nasal.

But as you can see, this is nothing you need to worry about, because our tongues work more or less in the same way .

Nasal vowels aren't German phonemes, but used for French loan words.



> There are both short and long *open* "o" sounds, as well as short and long *closed* "o" sounds, and there is a symbol for some sort of a nasal "o" sound


 
Examples from your book might have helped.


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## Kajjo

Leider ist die simple Regel mit dem kurzen und langen Vokal aber nicht korrekt. Deutsche Muttersprachler reduzieren nur deshalb gedanklich alles auf kurz und lang, weil sie die weiteren Unterscheidungen intuitiv richtig machen. 

Im Falle des Buchstabens -o- kann man mindestens drei Varianten sprechen:
1) lang geschlossen: Stoß, hohl, Büro
2) kurz geschlossen: desto, anno, Prospekt <o-Silben unbetont!>
3) kurz offen: Ochse, voll, von

Der Buchstabe -e- kann ebenso kurz/lang offen/geschlossen oder als Schwa gesprochen werden, also auf mindestens 5 Arten.

Kajjo


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## aleksk

Thank you Sulian. 

As for examples...well the book is Mastering German Vocabulary, so pronunciation is only a peripheral topic, but...say, at the moment I have it open on a page where I find the word "Konto". According to the book, both are short, but the first one is open and the second one is closed. So, I'm not supposed to make the difference by length, but by positioning the lips differently...They are represented by different symbols, which I can't type here unfortunately.

OK, I see Kajjo offered a quite different explanation. My question is, how important would you consider  making the difference between the open and closed sounds is? Because I can usually tell which "o" sound is long and which short (although that takes some time and looking up in the dictionary too), but distinguishing between the open and closed ones is really confusing for me. Would I be understood correctly if I don't make the difference, i.e. make a difference by length only?


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## Suilan

Kajjo said the same thing, only in different words


1) lang geschlossen: Stoß, hohl, Büro -- SAMPA /o:/
2) kurz geschlossen: desto, anno, Prospekt <o-Silben unbetont!> -- SAMPA /o/
3) kurz offen: Ochse, voll, von -- SAMPA /O/

from his comment <o-Silben unbetont!> it would seem he didn't read my entire post.



> Der Buchstabe -e- kann ebenso kurz/lang offen/geschlossen oder als Schwa gesprochen werden, also auf mindestens 5 Arten.


 
That seems to sum up to 4 different ways.


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## Suilan

> question is, how important would you consider making the difference between the open and closed sounds is?


 
This difference is important. /O/ and /o/ are truly different vowels.
Your example, /'kOn-to/
/kOn/ is the same as English "con", and /o/ as in French "faux" (only a little shorter), or US English _s*o*re._


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## aleksk

Suilan said:


> This difference is important. /O/ and /o/ are truly different vowels.
> Your example, /'kOn-to:/
> /kOn/ is the same as English "con", and /o:/ as in French "faux", or US English _s*o*re._




Thanks, the analogy with the English words helps a lot. 

Gosh, I didn't realize that the German vowel system was so complicated.  Heaps of different vowels  Well, like anything else in this language when I think about it.


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## Suilan

> Gosh, I didn't realize that the German vowel system was so complicated. Well, like anything else in this language when I think about it.


 
English vowels: 
1. /i/, as in see 
2. /I/ as in city
3. /e/ as in US English bear
4. /E/ as in bed
5. /{/ as in cat
6. /&/ as in US English that
7. /V/ as in run
8. /A/ as in arm or US English law
9. /u/ as in soon
10. /U/ as in put
11. /o/ as in US English sore
12. /O/ as in Brit. Engl law, caught
13. /Q/ as in Brit. Engl. not
14. /3/ as in bird
15. /@/ as in about, winner 

German vowels:
1. /i/, as in Miete
2. /I/ as in Mitte
3. /e/ as in beten
4. /E/ as in Bett
5. /Y/ as in Hütte
6. /y/ as in Hüte
7. /2/ as in Höhle
8. /9/ as in Hölle
9. /u/ as in Mut
10. /U/ as in Mutter
11. /o/ as in Fohlen
12. /O/ as in Sonne
13. /a/ as in Haar
14. /E:/ as in spät
15. /6/ as in besser
16. /@/ as in mitten

I like to think that the vowels are one of the more beautiful aspects of my native language.

http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/index.html

This link lists 22 different English vowels (incl. diphtongs) and 19 German vowels (incl. diphtongs).


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## aleksk

Suilan said:


> I like to think that the vowels are one of the more beautiful aspects of my native language.
> 
> http://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/home/sampa/index.html
> 
> This link lists 22 different English vowels (incl. diphtongs) and 19 German vowels (incl. diphtongs).



I know. When I say complicated, I don't mean it in a negative way...It's just complicated, like the German grammar is, or reading German....  In my native language there are 5 vowel sounds (as many as there are in Serbian for example; 6 in Bulgarian), so you can imagine what it feels like when I have to face 19 in German. The vowel system in English is very complex as well, but I've been listening to and using English ever since I was a kid in elementary school. I kind of grew up with English, so unlike German, it comes naturally.


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## Suilan

Five vowels? Wow. Um. Haven't studied a language yet with so few vowels. But I bet you have more consonants than we do. Very complicated consonants, no?


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## aleksk

Yes, only 5; most Slav languages have straightforward and simple vowel systems. There are not that many vowels in Italian or Spanish as well, as far as I know. Germanic languages, on the other hand, are characterized by their highly complex vowel systems and it takes a lot of patience and practice to get used to them if you didn't grow up listening to the language. I mean, why on Earth would you need two different vowels for the "o" sounds in Konto? It's just inefficient. I don't know about the etymology of the word, but we have the same word in Macedonian, and we pronounce it with the same vowel twice. (which is used in every other occasion when we need an "o")


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## Hutschi

Hi, 



Native German speaker usually do not hear the glottal stop at the beginning of an "o" sound in the beginning of a syllable.

It depends on the purpose and on what you are considering how you count. This means, it depends on the definition of the contrast between the sounds. Even if there are potentially infinitive different sounds, only some of them are used to show differences either in meaning or in other things. Additionally, it depends on regional usage.

A difference in the sound system between German and English is, that a contrast is between long and short rather than between tensed and lax vowels. You cannot compare the vowels directly, but you can render them by the others. They are not the same.


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## Whodunit

Hutschi said:


> Native German speaker usually do not hear the glottal stop at the beginning of an "o" sound in the beginning of a syllable.



That's true for all vowels, because the glottal stop is not a phoneme of the German language. However, it can be felt as a phoneme if you compare _verreisen_ with _vereisen_, where the latter has some kind of glottal stop to distinguish it from the former.


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## SaiH

Kajjo said:


> Leider ist die simple Regel mit dem kurzen und langen Vokal aber nicht korrekt. Deutsche Muttersprachler reduzieren nur deshalb gedanklich alles auf kurz und lang, weil sie die weiteren Unterscheidungen intuitiv richtig machen.
> 
> Im Falle des Buchstabens -o- kann man mindestens drei Varianten sprechen:
> 1) lang geschlossen: Stoß, hohl, Büro
> 2) kurz geschlossen: desto, anno, Prospekt <o-Silben unbetont!>
> 3) kurz offen: Ochse, voll, von
> 
> Der Buchstabe -e- kann ebenso kurz/lang offen/geschlossen oder als Schwa gesprochen werden, also auf mindestens 5 Arten.
> 
> Kajjo




Vom phonologischen Standpunkt aus betrachtet ist die Unterscheidung in 2 Qualitäten schon richtig: im Deutschen gibt es nur die Phoneme /o/ und /o:/
Jede weitere Unterscheidung ist phonetisch und bezieht sich auf Allophone dieser 2 Phoneme: geschlossen [o] oder offen [ɔ] oder wie auch immer...
Damit ist auch klar, warum deutsche Muttersprachler gedanklich alles auf kurz und lang reduzieren, denn im Prinzip ist nur das für das Verständnis wichtig.


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## Suilan

> Jede weitere Unterscheidung ist phonetisch und bezieht sich auf Allophone dieser 2 Phoneme: geschlossen [o] oder offen [ɔ] oder wie auch immer...


 
Sorry to disagree. /O/ and /o/ are both phonemes, because it is possible to find word or morpheme pairs that differ only in this sound, with the words/morphemes having different meanings, e.g. /fOn/ and /fon/ 

An allophone is defined as an alternative way of pronouncing a phoneme without causing any change of meaning. 

The difference between /o/ and /o:/ is unstressed vs. stressed syllable.

One example of what's not a phoneme in German would be the three different realizations of the r-sound  (uvular, alveolar, or as a-schwa.) These merely represent regional variants.  Whether you pronounce Herr as /'he6/, /'hER/ or /'hEr/ doesn't matter, it's still the same word.


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## SaiH

Kein Grund sich zu entschuldigen... ich war ungenau. 
Deutsch kennt die Phoneme /ɔ/ und /o:/, realisiert als [ɔ] und [o:] bzw. [o].



> The difference between /o/ and /o:/ is unstressed vs. stressed syllable.


Richtigerweise der Unterschied zwischen [o] und [o:]. (Wenn wir schon beim Haare spalten sind...)

Ein Minimalpaar mit [ɔ] und [o] (beide kurz) ist mir allerdings nicht bekannt.


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## aleksk

Hutschi said:


> Hi,
> 
> 
> 
> Native German speaker usually do not hear the glottal stop at the beginning of an "o" sound in the beginning of a syllable.
> 
> It depends on the purpose and on what you are considering how you count. This means, it depends on the definition of the contrast between the sounds. Even if there are potentially infinitive different sounds, only some of them are used to show differences either in meaning or in other things. Additionally, it depends on regional usage.
> 
> A difference in the sound system between German and English is, that a contrast is between long and short rather than between tensed and lax vowels. You cannot compare the vowels directly, but you can render them by the others. They are not the same.



I agree, in English making a difference between the tensed and lax vowels is crucial if you want to be properly understood. If followed by a consonant, the length of the vowel is determined by whether the consonant is unvoiced or voiced, with the voiced ones making the vowel longer - for example, you have exactly the same length for the vowels in beat and bid, where the vowels themselves are completely different sounds, that is, you can't really make the difference by length and be understood.

In German on the other hand, I think prolonging the vowel usually works to make the difference (long vs. short "i" etc.); I think it's mostly a matter of length, not sound quality. I hope you won't misunderstand me if I use only two "o" sounds - the short one and the long one, although there is a distinctive third one. 

I was reading an old thread where you discuss the difference between open and closed "e" "ä vs. e" and most of you said that you don't make the difference in speech in most dialects. Isn't this the same for open and closed "o"? Because, back to "konto", I got a native (from Vienna) to pronounce it for me and the two "o" sounds don't sound different at all to me at all. I may be not able to discriminate the sounds well, but all I heard is the same "o" sounds twice, just like in my native language


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## Hutschi

As mentioned, there is a difference between stressed and unstressed too. I searched for unstressed long "o" for some time, they seem to be seldom. I can speak the last "o" in "Konto" long, in this word it is unstressed, the stress is on the first syllable.

In a German book about the development of the German language, I found following rule:

The open "o" is used in closed syllables and the closed "o" is used in open syllables.

The difference in the sound is very small, however.

What I do not understand is the "nasal" o-sound. I have no idea, what it is or sounds like. When I try to speak an "o" nasal, it becomes silent.


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## aleksk

Hutschi said:


> As mentioned, there is a difference between stressed and unstressed too. I searched for unstressed long "o" for some time, they seem to be seldom. I can speak the last "o" in "Konto" long, in this word it is unstressed, the stress is on the first syllable.
> 
> In a German book about the development of the German language, I found following rule:
> 
> The open "o" is used in closed syllables and the closed "o" is used in open syllables.
> 
> The difference in the sound is very small, however.
> 
> What I do not understand is the "nasal" o-sound. I have no idea, what it is or sounds like. When I try to speak an "o" nasal, it becomes silent.



Thank you for your answer. About the nasal "o" - in my book the symbol is an "o" with the tilde (~) above (that's on the first page where the pronunciation symbols are explained), but I really haven't come across any words that contain this sound. It's supposed to appear mainly in words of foreign (non-German) origin, I think. If I come across a word with this sound one of these days, I'll let you know (PM you)


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## Hutschi

Die Wikipedia gibt Folgendes an: 



> Aussprache
> Im Deutschen wird das O für zwei Laute verwendet:
> 
> Das lange, geschlossene O wie in „B_oo_t“) und
> das kurze, offene O wie in „t_o_ll“).
> In Fremdwörtern kann das geschlossene o auch kurz sein („M_o_dell“ ), oder das offene auch lang („W_a_llstreet“).
> 
> Von „http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/O“
> 
> Diese Seite wurde zuletzt am 8. Juli 2007 um 08:15 Uhr geändert. Ihr Inhalt steht unter der GNU-Lizenz für freie Dokumentation.
> Wikipedia® ist eine eingetragene Marke der Wikimedia Foundation Inc.


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## Suilan

OK, one last thing about the producing /O/ and /o/

You get from /O/ to /o/ by pursing (i.e. rounding) your lips. Same with /U/ and /u/. 

Not for /i/ and /e/ though. They're both spoken with spread/relaxed lips; if you purse your lips while saying /i:/ you get /y:/ (ü); while /e:/ becomes /2:/ (ö).


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## Hutschi

Suilan said:


> Sorry to disagree. /O/ and /o/ are both phonemes, because it is possible to find word or morpheme pairs that differ only in this sound, with the words/morphemes having different meanings, e.g. /fOn/ and /fon/


 
Hi Suilan, I do not understand: Which words does it represent:

"von" and "..." ?

Best regards
Hutschi


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## Hutschi

aleksk said:


> About the nasal "o" - in my book the symbol is an "o" with the tilde (~) above (that's on the first page where the pronunciation symbols are explained), but I really haven't come across any words that contain this sound. It's supposed to appear mainly in words of foreign (non-German) origin, I think. If I come across a word with this sound one of these days, I'll let you know (PM you)


 
I found a word in the Duden (Das Aussprachewörterbuch).

It is "fond".

But I do not speak the "o" nasal but the "nd". May be there is a difference between my German pronunciation and the French one.

I speak it like "fong". I do not hear a difference to the short stressed "o".


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## Suilan

> "von" and "..." ?


fon, wie in Telefon. Deshalb sprach ich von Wörtern oder Morphemen.


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## Hutschi

In "Telefon" ist das "o" aber lang. ...fo:n  (nach dem Duden-Aussprachewörterbuch).
In "Telefonieren" ist es kurz. ...fon... 
In "Fon" ist es lang: fo:n
in "von" ist es kurz, aber es sieht aus, wie ein gespiegeltes "c". (Auf meinem Rechner kann ich es leider nicht darstellen.)

Trotzdem nehme ich als Kontrast zu "Fon" im Wesentlichen nur die Länge war. Ich stelle auch keinen Unterschied fest bei "Telefonieren" und "von", obwohl einer im Aussprachewörterbuch angegeben ist.

Das Aussprachewörterbuch gibt die Standardlautung an. Ich bin sehr sicher, dass ich nicht immer die Standardlautung verwende.


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## Suilan

> In "Telefon" ist das "o" aber lang. ...fo:n


 
Which shows that I (and other NRWler/Rhinelanders) stress Telefon on the first syllable, other Germans on the third.

(Many NRWler started to spell Spaß *Spass after the reform, because hey, it's a short vowel, right )


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## cyanista

aleksk said:


> About the nasal "o" - in my book the symbol is an "o" with the tilde (~) above (that's on the first page where the pronunciation symbols are explained), but I really haven't come across any words that contain this sound. It's supposed to appear mainly in words of foreign (non-German) origin, I think. If I come across a word with this sound one of these days, I'll let you know (PM you)


I suppose all of the words containing a nasal "o" are of French origin. Examples: Jargon[ ʒar'gõ:] Cordon bleu [kɔrdõ'blø], Coupon [ku'põ:]. There is also a nasal "a", as in Restaurant [rɛsto'rã:], Arrangement  [arãʒə'mã:] and, rarely, a nasal i, as in Gratin [gra't:~ɛ]. But many people replace nasal vowels with their non-nasal counterparts adding [ŋ] because it comes more natural.


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