# O-like vowels (RP English)



## Youngfun

I don't know the phonetic terminology so I'm gonna call them this way.

Italian has /o/ and /ɔ/.
English has roughly: /o/, /ɔ/, /ɒ/ and /ɑ/.

To me English /ɔ/ sounds like Italian /o/, while English /ɒ/ sounds like Italian /ɔ/, maybe a little more opened. English /ɑ/ sounds like /a/ to me as I don't have this vowel in my native languages. English /o/ sounds like something between /o/ and /u/, definitely more closed than Italian /o/.

An Italian phoneticist said these Italian vowels are a little more opened then their English counterparts, that Standard Italian (and Roman accent) /o/ is more towards /ɔ/, and /ɔ/ more toward /ɒ/, which seems a plausible explanation to me. He also said that Tuscan accent /o/ and /ɔ/ are more similar to the English ones.

So if each phonetic symbol varies between languages, is there a "standard" value for each one of them?


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## berndf

BrE /ɔ:/ and /ɒ/ are indeed raised compared to traditional RP. Today /ɔ:/ is closer to [o:] and /ɒ/ is somewhere in between [ɒ] and [ɔ]. Assignment of IPA symbols often still reflects English as it was spoken in Daniel Jones' days.

AmE /ɑ/ is only called "o" because it is the sound of the historical short "o". The modern pronunciation and General American has not really much to do with an "o". Many vowel descriptions in English relate to historical phonemes rather than to modern ones, e.g. calling [eɪ] a "long a". This is related to the fact that English spelling still by and large reflects 15th century pronunciation.


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## Nino83

Youngfun said:


> English has roughly: /o/, /ɔ/, /ɒ/ and /ɑ/.



What do you mean for /o/? 
In English there is the [ɔː] sound (as in *Au*stralian, l*aw*, c*augh*t, th*ough*t), the [ɒ] sound (as in l*o*t, n*o*t) and the [ɑː] sound (as in f*a*ther), which merged in AmE with [ɒ] (determining [ɑ], as in f*a*ther, l*o*t). 

If you intend to say _long o_, it's a diphthong [əʊ]/[oʊ] (not an [o]). 

So, English has [ɔː] and [ɒ] ([ɑ] in AmE). 
In BrE the [ɒ] is a little (very little, among younger RP speakers) more open than Italian [ɔ] while [ɔː] is almost equal to [o]. 
In AmE the [ɑ] is a low vowel while the [ɔ] is almost equal to the Italian [ɔ]. 

The English vowel [əʊ]/[oʊ] is a diphthong, so there's no corrispondent vowel in Italian. 

Listen to the word _warm_ http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/warm_1?q=warm# 
As you can note the BrE [ɔː] is closer (almost equal to [o]) than AmE (Midwest, General American pronunciation) [ɔ] (which is equal to [ɔ]).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In BrE the [ɒ] is a little (very little, among younger RP speakers) more open than Italian [ɔ] while [ɔː] is almost equal to [o].


His question was why you call the phoneme /ɔː/, if its realization is closes to [o:] than to [ɔː].


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> His question was why you call the phoneme /ɔː/, if its realization is closes to [o:] than to [ɔː].



Ah, ok  

As you said, English phonetic transcription is too traditional (I think it's absurd to use the symbol [ʌ] in words like _cut, but_). 

Anyway, in AmE the phoneme /ɔ/ is the right choice for [ɔ].


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I think it's absurd to use the symbol [ʌ] in words like _cut, but_.


Not so absurd. Realization is anywhere in the triangle [ʌ]-[ɐ]-[ɜ]. You have to pick one symbol. Jones did already admit for his own time that [ʌ] wasn't completely accurate.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> In English there is the [ɔː] sound (as in *Au*stralian, l*aw*, c*augh*t, th*ough*t), the [ɒ] sound (as in l*o*t, n*o*t) and the [ɑː] sound (as in f*a*ther), which merged in AmE with [ɒ] (determining [ɑ], as in f*a*ther, l*o*t).


 You are mistaken here, _father_ and _lot_ are very different vowels in AmE.  The vowel in _father, heart, card_ is back, wide open, unrounded and long; _lot, not, rotten_ is short and very low with slightly rounded lips. The sound in _Australian_, _bought_ and _thought_ is also long like _father_ but quite a bit higher, with rounded lips.  Whichever symbol is best to describe that I'll let you be the judge.



> If you intend to say _long o_, it's a diphthong [əʊ]/[oʊ] (not an [o]).


 Some people pronounce it not as a diphthong but as a closed [o], especially in closed syllables like in _rose, clothes_.  That's probably what Youngfun is referring to.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> You are mistaken here, _father_ and _lot_ are very different vowels in AmE.



I'm reporting what cambridge dictionary says (I'm not a native speaker, so you'll be probably right). 
[fɑðɚ], [lɑt], [θɔt].


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I'm reporting what cambridge dictionary says (I'm not a native speaker, so you'll be probably right).
> [fɑː.ðɚ], [lɑt], [θɔt].



Ok.  I'm not sure why they say that.  It would mean that _father_ and _bother_ would have to rhyme...


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## Youngfun

Nino83 said:


> What do you mean for /o/?
> [...]
> 
> If you intend to say _long o_, it's a diphthong [əʊ]/[oʊ] (not an [o]).


I intended [o] (maybe I had to use brackets?) as a sound that exists in general, not a specific vowel. It's present in the diphthong /oʊ/ (which is pronounced as [o:] by many people as merquiades said), and in BE [o:] is used as a variant of /ʊə/ (e.g. _poor_).


> In BrE the [ɒ] is a little (very little, among younger RP speakers) more open than Italian [ɔ] while [ɔː] is almost equal to [o].


Agree.
For some speakers [ɔ:] it's even more closed than Italian [o]! (gonna post the video later)



> In AmE the [ɑ] is a low vowel while the [ɔ] is almost equal to the Italian [ɔ].


Maybe we have different accents in Italian, but to me even American [ɔ] sounds like Italian [o]. _Lawyer_ sounds like Italian _colore_, not like _alloro_.
Of course, talking about Americans who don't have the cot-caught merger.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Ok.  I'm not sure why they say that.  It would mean that _father_ and _bother_ would have to rhyme...


Webster also describes the vowels of "father" and "not" as equal. GA speakers I discussed this with agreed. Yes,."bother" and "father" rhyme in GA.


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## merquiades

Youngfun said:


> Maybe we have different accents in Italian, but to me even American [ɔ] sounds like Italian [o]. _Lawyer_ sounds like Italian _colore_, not like _alloro_.
> Of course, talking about Americans who don't have the cot-caught merger.



I would agree that the aw in _lawyer_ is equivalent to the second o in _colore_.  Same as in _caught_ actually.

_Cot_ is like _not, hot, pot_. 
I know English vowels are complicated!



			
				Berndf said:
			
		

> Webster also describes the vowels of "father" and "not" as equal. GA speakers I discussed this with agreed. Yes,."bother" and "father" rhyme in GA.



I would not agree with this. Length and roundness are different.


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## Nino83

Youngfun said:


> Maybe we have different accents in Italian, but to me even American [ɔ] sounds like Italian [o]. _Lawyer_ sounds like Italian _colore_, not like _alloro_.



Yes, I agree (being Sicilian, my [ɔ] is, for sure, lower than the American one). I said that the American [ɔ] is a bit lower than British [ɔ:]. 



berndf said:


> Webster also describes the vowels of "father" and "not" as equal. GA speakers I discussed this with agreed. Yes,."bother" and "father" rhyme in GA.





merquiades said:


> I would not agree with this. Length and roundness are different.



Hasn't General American got the father/bother merger?


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes, I agree (being Sicilian, my [ɔ] is, for sure, lower than the American one). I said that the American [ɔ] is a bit lower than British [ɔ:].


So would you say Sicilians pronounce _cosa_, _rosa_ with a very low vowel close to [ɒ] like in _pot_, _hot_?




> Hasn't General American got the father/bother merger?


It sounds really bad to me.  I can't imagine it.  Which way are they supposed to be merging?


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> So would you say Sicilians pronounce _cosa_, _rosa_ with a very low vowel close to [ɒ] like in _pot_, _hot_?



No, it is the same but we pronounce it all the time (Sicilians have five vowels, a, ɛ, i, ɔ, u, and some very marked accents have ɪ and ʊ instead of i and u). 
I'm able to pronounce [e] and [o] but when I speak without thinking at it, I pronounce always [ɛ] and [ɔ]. 



merquiades said:


> It sounds really bad to me.  I can't imagine it.  Which way are they supposed to be merging?



New England, Boston and NY don't have it.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> No, it is the same but we pronounce it all the time (Sicilians have five vowels, a, ɛ, i, ɔ, u, and some very marked accents have ɪ and ʊ instead of i and u).
> I'm able to pronounce [e] and [o] but when I speak without thinking at it, I pronounce always [ɛ] and [ɔ].



It seems very open sounding, not to mention simpler.  So you all have issues with _pésca, pèsca_ too.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> I would not agree with this. Length and roundness are different.


In GA the length difference is neutralised and rounding of the short o doesn't exist any more. This is not so in all regional accents. In New England accent the rounding is still present though an increasing number of speakers in New England speak don't make the distinction any more. The traditional New England short o is qualitatively the same as the British short o but longer.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> It seems very open sounding, not to mention simpler.  So you all have issues with _pésca, pèsca_ too.



Fortunately they are not phonemic (every Regional speech has his, different, distribution).  
But if I were in France I'd say (if I didn't pay attention) something like _je suis allè_.


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## Youngfun

merquiades said:


> It sounds really bad to me.  I can't imagine it.  Which way are they supposed to be merging?


_Bother_ rhymes with _father_. The _father_ vowel is also used for _not, hot, pot_. So that they sound like baather, naat, haat, paat.
That's the accent used in most American media.



Nino83 said:


> Yes, I agree (being Sicilian, my [ɔ] is, for sure, lower than the American one). I said that the American [ɔ] is a bit lower than British [ɔ:].


My [ɔ] is so low that it sounds like the English [ɒ].

_lotto_ /'lɔtto/ sounds like _lot_ /lɒt/ (BE or New England accent)

_colore_ /ko'lore/ sounds like _lawyer_ /'lɔjə˞/


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> _lotto_ /'lɔtto/ sounds like _lot_ /lɒt/ (BE or New England accent)


Not to me. Especially when long (compared to the British variety) as in New England, the difference is conspicuous. When I hear an Bostonian say "Bɒɒɒɒɒston", it is realy unique.


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## merquiades

Youngfun said:


> _Bother_ rhymes with _father_. The _father_ vowel is also used for _not, hot, pot_. So that they sound like baather, naat, haat, paat.
> That's the accent used in most American media.


[na:t], [ha:t], [pa:t] sounds like strong southern or western drawl to me. On TV people who play those roles use that accent.



> My [ɔ] is so low that it sounds like the English [ɒ].
> 
> _lotto_ /'lɔtto/ sounds like _lot_ /lɒt/ (BE or New England accent)
> 
> _colore_ /ko'lore/ sounds like _lawyer_ /'lɔjə˞/



So you say rawsa, cawsa and colawre?


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## Nino83

Rosa and cosa have an [ɔ] (in Standard Italian, and, for sure, in Sicily too ).


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Rosa and cosa have an [ɔ] (in Standard Italian, and, for sure, in Sicily too ).



I think I want to go to Sicily!
The problem is in Standard Italian it's not always easy to know when a vowel is open or closed.  You have to memorize lists.
I think Giovane divertente meant that he used [ɒ] not [ɔ]


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> I think I want to go to Sicily!
> The problem is in Standard Italian it's not always easy to know when a vowel is open or closed.  You have to memorize lists.



Yes, but only actors (and some anchor-man) speak Standard Italian so it's not important to know whether the vowel is mid-open or mid-closed. This is why it's not written.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes, but only actors (and some anchor-man) speak Standard Italian so it's not important to know whether the vowel is mid-open or mid-closed. This is why it's not written.



So you mean it's not just Sicilians who don't distinguish them... [koza] or [kɔza], whatever you want?


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> [na:t], [ha:t], [pa:t] sounds like strong southern or western drawl to me. On TV people who play those roles use that accent.


The short o is certainly generally longer in American accents than in British accents and the length in "father" is not distinctive enough in American accents to maintain anything close to a stable distinction between the vowels in _n*o*t_ and _f*a*ther_.


merquiades said:


> So you say rawsa, cawsa and colawre?


A generalized description of the English /ɔ/ phoneme as a cardinal closed [o] is certainly not correct. Some dictionaries do it because they don't want to bother with diacritics. Those dictionaries then also transcribe _get _as [get]. The best comparison is probably to a Spanish /o/ which is in between open and closed. There are some accents where in some phonetic contexts the /ɔ/ phoneme is really a closed [o]; maybe listen to a modern RP speaker saying _st*o*ry_.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> So you mean it's not just Sicilians who don't distinguish them... [koza] or [kɔza], whatever you want?



As a side note, everyone hears the difference between [o] and [ɔ], [ɛ] and [e], so it's not a problem of perception (in fact, in Italy it's easy to predict whether one is from the north or from the south) but there are Regional variations in speaking. 
A Roman will say _col*ɔ*nna_ (instead of _col*o*nna_), a Neapolitan will say _l_*ɔ*_ro_ and _u*o*mo_ (instead of _l*o*ro_ and _u_*ɔ*_mo_), a Sicilian will say _col*ɔ*nna, __l_*ɔ*_ro_ and _u_*ɔ*_mo_. 

All these people are speaking Standard Italian (from all points of view except for pronunciation) but the pronunciation of the mid vowels is different.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> The short o is certainly generally longer in American accents than in British accents and the length in "father" is not distinctive enough in American accents to maintain anything close to a stable distinction between the vowels in _n*o*t_ and _f*a*ther_.



Ok, it's probably not as short as in RP British.  I think all short vowels are slightly longer in American English.  It's really the quality that is difference.  For example the vowel in "father" is truly an [a], nothing "o" like about it, maybe even moving slightly toward [æ]. The vowel in "not" might be longer than in BE but it's not exaggerated anyway in the speech of people who don't draw out their vowels.  It's certainly more rounded than not too, low, and generally of an "o" nature.  



> A generalized description of the English /ɔ/ phoneme as a cardinal closed [o] is certainly not correct. Some dictionaries do it because they don't want to bother with diacritics. Those dictionaries then also transcribe _get _as [get]. The best comparison is probably to a Spanish /o/ which is in between open and closed. There are some accents where in some phonetic contexts the /ɔ/ phoneme is really a closed [o]; maybe listen to a modern RP speaker saying _st*o*ry_.



I took it that Spanish /o/ was about half-way between Italian closed [o] and [ɔ]. If it seems that only actors and anchormen make this difference, I'm wondering if the common Italian vowel(s) and the Spanish one are approaching the same quality.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> As a side note, everyone hears the difference between [o] and [ɔ], [ɛ] and [e], so it's not a problem of perception (in fact, in Italy it's easy to predict whether one is from the north of from the south) but there are Regional variations in speaking.
> A Roman will say _col*ɔ*nna_ (instead of _col*o*nna_), a Neapolitan will say _l_*ɔ*_ro_ and _u*o*mo_ (instead of _l*o*ro_ and _u_*ɔ*_mo_), a Sicilian will say _col*ɔ*nna, __l_*ɔ*_ro_ and _u_*ɔ*_mo_.
> 
> All these people are speaking Standard Italian (from all points of view except for pronunciation) but the pronunciation of the mid vowels is different.



So everyone hears the difference but not many make the difference.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> So everyone hears the difference but not many make the difference.



Yes. There are too few minimal pairs (bòtte and bótte, pèsca and pésca), everyone pronounces it in a different manner and their meaning is understood from the context. 



> L’opposizione fonologica tra le semichiuse e le semiaperte è di *scarso rendimento funzionale* e si registra in poche varietà della penisola. La distinzione tra semiaperte e semichiuse secondo l’uso toscano è infatti in forte regresso fuori dalla regione: tra le cause, la mancanza di una sistematica differenziazione grafica, le difformi pronunce settentrionali e meridionali, la scarsità di coppie minime del tipo pésca ~ pèsca e bòtte ~ bótte. Del resto, *già Devoto* (19644: 150) *aveva previsto la diffusione di un sistema* pentavocalico o comunque, di un sistema *in cui ci fosse una sorta di indifferenza al timbro delle vocali medie*.



http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/chiuse-e-aperte-vocali_(Enciclopedia_dell'Italiano)/ 

Only actors and (some) anchors speak with the _right_ pronunciation (which you can find here http://www.dizionario.rai.it/ricerca.aspx).


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes. There are too few minimal pairs (bòtte and bótte, pèsca and pésca), everyone pronounces it in a different manner and their meaning is understood from the context.
> 
> 
> 
> http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/chiuse-e-aperte-vocali_(Enciclopedia_dell'Italiano)/
> 
> Only actors and (some) anchors speak with the _right_ pronunciation (which you can find here http://www.dizionario.rai.it/ricerca.aspx).



Thanks for the links.  I'm going to read it all.  
Otherwise, I guess that in Italy phonics, phonetics and spelling are not important subjects for children at school.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Otherwise, I guess that in Italy phonics, phonetics and spelling are not important subjects for children at school.



Yes. Firstly because Italian was a written language until 1861 and finally because it's no use teaching it, seeing that there are very few minimal pairs. 

If you think about it, also in (Parisian?) French the distinction between open-mid and closed-mid vowels is lost (open-mid in closed syllables vice versa), except for final _é_ and _ai_. So is it in Spanish. 
The fact is that in Vulgar Latin there are few minimal pairs so this distinction is not very important.


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## Dan2

merquiades said:


> You are mistaken here, _father_ and _lot_ are very different vowels in AmE.  The vowel in _father, heart, card_ is back, wide open, unrounded and long; _lot, not, rotten_ is short and very low with slightly rounded lips.


What you describe is accurate for the traditional speech of eastern New England, and this pattern is still widely heard in that area.  Since you identify your native language/dialect as "Northeast US", it's not surprising that you perceive things this way.  But for the great majority of Americans, the "father" and "hot" vowel phonemes have merged, "father" rhymes with "bother", and, for ex., "Bach" is identical to "bock"; this pattern is reflected in modern American dictionaries and is the standard for network radio and TV.

berndf has described the situation very accurately and I'm writing in support of what he has said.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> If you think about it, also in (Parisian?) French the distinction between open-mid and closed-mid vowels is lost (open-mid in closed syllables vice versa), except for final _é_ and _ai_. So is it in Spanish.
> The fact is that in Vulgar Latin there are few minimal pairs so this distinction is not very important.


The distinction between the open and closed o is very much alive in French. Merger of these phonemes is a particularity of southern accents.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes. Firstly because Italian was a written language until 1861 and finally because it's no use teaching it, seeing that there are very few minimal pairs.
> 
> If you think about it, also in (Parisian?) French the distinction between open-mid and closed-mid vowels is lost (open-mid in closed syllables vice versa), except for final _é_ and _ai_. So is it in Spanish.
> The fact is that in Vulgar Latin there are few minimal pairs so this distinction is not very important.



Unstressed open and closed e and o are neutralized in many speakers but in the case of accented syllables the opposition is rigorously carried out.  Actually there are many minimum pairs.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> The distinction between the open and closed o is very much alive in French. Merger of these phonemes is a particularity of southern accents.



But "_Dans les syllabes ouvertes accentuées et dans les syllabes fermées accentuées avec /z/, on prononce toujours /o/"_ and "_Dans les syllabes fermées accentuées, on prononce toujours /ɛ/. À l'inverse du français méridional où la distinction n'est quasiment plus faite entre les deux phonèmes_". 

So the difference still exist but it is regular an predictable. There are very few minimal pairs (_allais - allé, jeune - jeûne, Paul - Paule_). 

A friend of mine speaks French very well but she, as a good Sicilian, pronounces always [ɛ] and [ɔ]. When she was in Paris received many compliment for her spoken French (it's rare that French people compliment somebody for his/her speaking). 

N.B. 
The site is speaking about _written_ closed syllables (that in spoken language become open, due to the loss of final consonants). 

In Standard Italian or Portuguese it's very difficult to predict when a stressed vowel is mid-open or mid-closed.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> A friend of mine speaks French very well but she, as a good Sicilian, pronounces always [ɛ] and [ɔ]. When she was in Paris received many compliment for her spoken French (it's rare that French people compliment somebody for his/her speaking).


It is an extremely conspicuous southern dialect feature if one says "à goche" instead of "à gauche". Rest assured that this will not remain unnoticed by non-southern speakers.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> It is an extremely conspicuous southern dialect feature if one says "à goche" instead of "à gauche". Rest assured that this will not remain unnoticed by non-southern speakers.



Yes, in fact they noticed her open vowels. 



merquiades said:


> Unstressed open and closed e and o are neutralized in many speakers but in the case of accented syllables the opposition is rigorously carried out.  Actually there are many minimum pairs.



Yes, it's true but if we exclude final syllables (with final unpronounced consonants), there are few minimal pairs and stressed closed syllables have an open-mid vowel. 

For example: p*ɔ*rta, p*ɔ*ʁt (door) but s*ɔ*ʁti (gone out), s*o*rto (risen), c*o*rto (short, in French c*ou*rt, ), c*ɔ*rso (Corsican), c*o*rso (course, avenue). In Portuguese p*o*rto (port), c*o*rso (Corsican) and so on.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> stressed closed syllables have an open-mid vowel.


This is absolutely not true. French is full of closed os in closed syllables. There are usually etymological reasons why they are closed or open and this is reflected in spelling. This creates the "predictability" you talked about earlier as long as spelling is known. But there is absolutely no phonological rule in French that would force open os in closed syllables.


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## Nino83

If we see the evolution of Vulgar Latin [e] and [o] in closed syllables we see that [e] became [ɛ] (for example _s_ǐ_ccum = secco = sɛc_) and [o] became  (_corte = court_). 
It's true that _a,e + l_ = [o] (_falsum = faux, bellu(m) = beau_) but this merger opened the syllable. 
It's true that there are open vowels in (now) open syllables (_factum = f__ɛ_, for example). 

Could you make me an example of closed mid vowel in closed syllable in French?


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Could you make me an example of closed mid vowel in closed syllable in French?


I gave you one: _gauche_.


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## Nino83

Thank you berndf (I thought the word was spelled _gau-che_).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Thank you berndf (I thought the word was spelled _gau-che_).


I don't undertand what you mean. Syllables are pronounced, not spelled. And the modern pronunciation is mono-syllabic.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I don't undertand what you mean. Syllables are pronounced, not spelled. And the modern pronunciation is mono-syllabic.



There is a misunderstanding. 



Nino83 said:


> N.B.
> The site is speaking about _written_ closed syllables (that in spoken language become open, due to the loss of final consonants).



For me there is a (written) closed syllable when the first syllable ends with a consonant and the next syllable begins with a consonant. For example _por-te, al-to, fac-to, an-che, vis-to, am-bo_. 
The word _gauche_ was open (go-ʃə). It became closed because of the loss of the final vowel. 

So, for precision, I rephrase the question. 

Are there, in Modern French, mid-closed vowels in syllables ending with a consonant (not counting nasal vowels) when the next syllable begins with a consonant?


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Are there, in Modern French, mid-closed vowels in syllables ending with a consonant (not counting nasal vowels) when the next syllable begins with a consonant?



Have a look here.  There are quite a few.  You have to consider that final -e is now silent so that creates several closed syllables of this type:  rôde, Paule, rauque, jeûne, serveuse, Beaune....


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## Nino83

That's what I meant. 
Before a consonant cluster, in Modern French there are only open-mid vowels (while in Standard Italian pronunciation and in Portuguese there are open-mid or closed-mid vowels). In these envitoments the opposition is lost. 
Another story for words like _gauche, fait_, where the syllable became closed or open due to the loss, in pronunciation, of the final vowel/consonant (so we have [o] in gauche and [ɛ] in fait).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> That's what I meant.
> Before a consonant cluster, in Modern French there are only open-mid vowels (while in Standard Italian pronunciation and in Portuguese there are open-mid or closed-mid vowels). In these envitoments the opposition is lost.
> Another story for words like _gauche, fait_, where the syllable became closed or open due to the loss, in pronunciation, of the final vowel/consonant (so we have [o] in gauche and [ɛ] in fait).


If you need an open /o/ in an Old French closed syllable, take _fauz _(modern spelling _faux_).


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## Nino83

Nino83 said:


> But "_Dans les syllabes ouvertes accentuées et dans les syllabes fermées accentuées avec /z/, on prononce toujours /o/"_


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## berndf

And what does this tell us? We all agree that there are etymological reasons for the distribution of closed and open <o>s and this is reflected is spelling giving a good predictability of pronunciation from spelling. But we are discussing synchronic phonology in this thread. I am not quite sure why this sould be relevant. The point is that there is no phonological rule in modern French whereby you can deduce if in a certain position only open or only closed os are possible.


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## Nino83

This is relevant for the question raised by merquiades (it's difficult in Italian to predict whether the stressed vowel is open-mid or closed-mid). In French, before a consonant cluster the opposition is lost. 
In other enviroments the phonemic distinction between these vowels remains relevant in French because of the loss of vowels and final consonants (which would lead to a lot of homophones) but in Italian this distinction is irrelevant while in Portuguese, the most of the time, it's necessary to distinguish between nouns and the present tense of verbs (_pêlo [e]_, hair, _pélo_ [ɛ], I peel). In those languages minimal pairs are very few.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> This is relevant for the question raised by merquiades (it's difficult in Italian to predict whether the stressed vowel is open-mid or closed-mid). In French, before a consonant cluster the opposition is lost.
> In other enviroments the phonemic distinction between these vowels remains relevant in French because of the loss of vowels and final consonants (which would lead to a lot of homophones) but in Italian this distinction is irrelevant while in Portuguese, the most of the time, it's necessary to distinguish between nouns and the present tense of verbs (_pêlo [e]_, hair, _pélo_ [ɛ], I peel). In those languages minimal pairs are very few.


I am a bit lost. What do you say in the end? Is phonemicity of the /ɔ/-/o/-distinction more important in French or Italian? (And please, no reference to spelling, this is a purely phonological question).


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## merquiades

Nino.  Here are the some closed syllable minimal pairs contrasting /o/ and /ɔ/ in French:  côte/cotte, nôtre/notre, Aude/ode, l'auge/loge, paume/pomme, rauque/roc, saule/sol, saute/sotte, Beaune/bonne, Beauce/bosse, Paule/Paul

Now, cases of /o/ in closed syllables in original Langue d'oil speaking areas:
/z/ closes the vowel in all occasions:  pose, rose, chose, Berlioz
/s/ closes the vowel in only three words:  grosse, fosse, adosse... all the rest have /ɔ/
Single /n/ and /m/ close the vowel, but not double /n/ or /m/:  atome, idiome, amazone
In other cases "o" represents open /ɔ/ in closed syllables
Besides "o"
"(e)au" is closed /o/ in all cases unless the following consonant is an /r/, in which case the vowel has been opened to /ɔ/ since it became guttural/uvular.
"ô" represents closed /o/ in every other closed syllable:  drôle, môle, rôde
Source:  _D'accord_, Carduner and Hagiwara

Knowing just a few simple rules, it seems quite easy to predict whether the vowel will be closed in French closed syllables.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> I am a bit lost. What do you say in the end? Is phonemicity of the /ɔ/-/o/-distinction more important in French or Italian? (And please, no reference to spelling, this is a purely phonological question).



In French it's more important. It (this importance) is a consequence of the loss of final vowels and consonants. 
For example it's important to distinguish _fée_ from _fait _(while in Italian there are _fata_ and _fatto_, in Portuguese _fada_ and _feito_). 
I'm saying that in Vulgar Latin and in Old Romance languages, there were few minimal pairs based on this distinction. 

For example, in Portuguese there are _mɔro_ (I live) and _mora_ (delayed payment). It's not important if one says _moro_ or _mɔra_, he will be understood (also in Southern European Portuguese, in fast speech, the final /a/ is pronounced). If the Portuguese weren't to pronounce final vowels, the /ɔ/-/o/-distinction would become relevant. 

Anyway, before a consonant cluster, in French there are only mid-open vowels (the opposition is lost in these cases), as in _p__ɔrt, p__ɔrte, s__ɔrti_ (with the few exceptions that merquiades said) while in Portuguese there is both _pɔrto_ and _força_ and in Italian there is both _fɔrza_ and _forse_.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In French it's more important.


Ok, yes I can see that. On the other hand there is an important group of speakers that have completely neutralized the /ɔ/-/o/-distinction and they seem to do fine; among themselves and with other French speakers. French have probably learned to live with a high number of homophones and adding a few more doesn't seem to be too much of a problem.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> For example, in Portuguese there are _mɔro_ (I live) and _mora_ (delayed payment). It's not important if one says _moro_ or _mɔra_, he will be understood (also in Southern European Portuguese, in fast speech, the final /a/ is pronounced). If the Portuguese weren't to pronounce final vowels, the /ɔ/-/o/-distinction would become relevant.


 What about _gósto-gôsto_, _mólho-môlho_, _córte-côrte_,_ fórma-fôrma_ and _póde-pôde_?



> Anyway, before a consonant cluster, in French there are only mid-open vowels (the opposition is lost in these cases), as in _p__ɔrt, p__ɔrt, s__ɔrti_ (with the few exceptions that merquiades said) while in Portuguese there is both _pɔrto_ and _força_ and in Italian there is both _fɔrza_ and _forte_.


They are probably /ɔ/ rather because of the "r" element.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> What about _gósto-gôsto_, _mólho-môlho_, _córte-côrte_,_ fórma-fôrma_ and _póde-pôde_?





Nino83 said:


> while in Portuguese, most of the time, it's necessary to distinguish between nouns and the present tense of verbs (_pêlo [e]_, hair, _pélo_ [ɛ], I peel). In those languages minimal pairs are very few.



The verb _poder_ is one of the few irregular verbs.


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## berndf

Nino, I mentioned this a few times, *now I do it officially with my moderator hat on*. Trying to find historical explanation for each and every open or closed o sound in French is *not *what this thread is about. It is about *synchronic *phonemic contrasts and realizations in different languages. Please don't monopolize this thread.


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## Youngfun

berndf said:


> Not to me. Especially when long (compared to the British variety) as in New England, the difference is conspicuous. When I hear an Bostonian say "Bɒɒɒɒɒston", it is realy unique.


I don't know Boston accent but I meant an American accent that doesn't have cot-caught merger.



merquiades said:


> [na:t], [ha:t], [pa:t] sounds like strong southern or western drawl to me. On TV people who play those roles use that accent.


Oh... I forgot that in your accent you have [a] in _father_. In General American _father_ has [ɑ], the same vowel used for [nɑt], [hɑt], [pɑt].



> So you say rawsa, cawsa and colawre?


No, I say rosa, cosa, cawlawre.
In "traditional Italian IPA": /rɔza/, /kɔza/, /ko'lore/.
But for English speakers learning Italian I would transcribe them as: [rɒza], [kɒza], [kɔ'lɔɾe].



merquiades said:


> I took it that Spanish /o/ was about half-way between Italian closed [o] and [ɔ]. If it seems that only actors and anchormen make this difference, I'm wondering if the common Italian vowel(s) and the Spanish one are approaching the same quality.


I'm wondering if English /ɔ/ is like Spanish /o/, i.e. something half-way, or even _it is_ really /o/.
In Italy some regions distinguish them like the Standard, some regions have both closed and open o but use them in different words than Standard Italian, and some other regions don't distinguish them.



Nino83 said:


> In *Standard Italian* or Portuguese it's very difficult to predict when a stressed vowel is mid-open or mid-closed.


Latin etymology?


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> I don't know Boston accent but I meant an American accent that doesn't have cot-caught merger.


I haven't come across any accent where the vowel in _lot_ is pronounced like in Italian _lotto. _It is always open or near open and never mid-open. It is the same kind of difference as between_ bet_ (mid-open) and _bat_ (near-open).

New England accents and especially Bostonian do have the cot-caught merger (but not the father-bother merger as merquiades' comments show) but the outcome of this merger is the opening of [ɔ] to become [ɒ] and not the other way round.


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## Youngfun

Sorry, I got confused, I meant "an American accent without the father-bother merger" as merquiades' one.
So _lot_ would be [lɒt] (and not [lɑt])... while for English speakers I would transcribe _lotto_ (that has open o) as ['lɒttɔ]. I think that sounds pretty alike. What do you think?


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## Youngfun

berndf said:


> New England accents and especially Bostonian do have the cot-caught merger (but not the father-bother merger as merquiades' comments show) but the outcome of this merger is the opening of [ɔ] to become [ɒ] and not the other way round.


In my opinion, this one makes [ɔ] more similar to the Italian opened o - traditionally transcribed as /ɔ/.


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> So _lot_ would be [lɒt] (and not [lɑt])... while for English speakers I would transcribe _lotto_ (that has open o) as ['lɒttɔ]. I think that sounds pretty alike. What do you think?


No, the vowel of _l*o*tto_ is still closer to that of _law_ than to that of _lot_. For an Italian the important difference is between [o] and [ɔ] and the difference between [ɔ] and [ɒ] is relatively minor. For an English speaker it is exactly the opposite. The [o] and [ɔ] difference is quite unimportant. One speaker pronounces the vowel of _law _more like [o] and the other more like [ɔ]. Doesn't matter. But what matters is the difference between [ɔ] and [ɒ]. If you lose that difference than you you have the cot-caught merger.


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## Youngfun

Well, my ears don't think so. And this is not the first time my ears hear something different from the IPA transcriptions.


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## berndf

Youngfun said:


> Well, my ears don't think so. And this is not the first time my ears hear something different from the IPA transcriptions.


Don't worry. This happens to all of us.


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## Nino83

Hello everyone. 
In another thread, Senior Member entangledbank linked this page, http://englishspeechservices.com/blog/british-vowels/, where phonetician and professor Geoff Lindsey makes a great analysis of the contemporary "Standard South British English", updating the obsolete IPA transcriptions found in most dictionaries (which are based on RP spoken by upper class from 1900 to 1950), with audio sources of Nick Clegg, the Royal Family, BBC journalists and so on. 

It seems that /æ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/ and /ʊ/ are relicts of the past. 
About /ɒ/ it is said that: 
"SB LOT is also very similar to the ɔ of Italian. Here, again from Google Translate, are English "bossy" and Italian "posso", then repeated with the initial consonant-vowel sequences swapped. I’ll let you decide whether the originals or the edited versions come first".
"And again, there’s some similarity to the "o" of Italian, though the latter tends to be more exactly cardinal 7-like. Compare English "sauna" from the online Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary with Italian "sono" from the Dizionario italiano multimediale e multilingue d’ortografia e di pronunzia". 

So there was an anticlockwise shift (/æ/ = [a, ä], /ʌ/ towards [ə/ɜː], /ɒ/ = [ɔ], /ɔː/ towards [oː] and /ʊ/ = [ɵ]). 

So todays's "RP" /ɒ/ is equal to cardinal [ɔ] in South Britain. 

P.S. 
This is the best transcription of contemporary RP that I've ever read.


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## sound shift

Nino83 said:


> It seems that /æ/ /ʌ/ /ɒ/ and /ʊ/ are relicts of the past.


That's not true for my area and it's not true for many older people in the South of England. I will go to my grave without saying [gəd bək], a pronunciation (of "good book") that was very rare in my youth and still sounds awful to me.


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## Nino83

sound shift said:


> I will go to my grave without saying [gəd bək], a pronunciation (of "good book") that was very rare in my youth and still sounds awful to me.



It's not [g*ə*d b*ə*k] but [g*ɵ*d b*ɵ*k] (it's a more central and a bit lower [ʊ], higher than [ə] and rounded, i.e a close-mid central rounded vowel, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-mid_central_rounded_vowel). 

It's the sound of RP (after 1970) "short u".


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## sound shift

Well, I hear a lot of young people in the South using an unrounded version, so I stand by my schwa. I see that I am supported in this by entangledbank, who clearly knows a lot about this sort of thing and said in one of your other threads that:





> These days the de facto standard Southern/RP-ish BrE speech has cardinal [e] for KIT, cardinal [a] for TRAP, and strongly fronted and *unrounded* GOOSE and FOOT vowels.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> This is the best transcription of contemporary RP that I've ever read.


Contemporary RP? Central pronunciation of /ʌ/ (realized as [ɐ]; the qualitative identification with [ə] is ok from an English native speakers perspective because English speakers are generally unable to distinguish e-Schwas and a-Schwas, but in absolute terms /ʌ/=[ə] is certainly wrong) is a conspicuous London regionalism which modern RP speakers from other regions do not share. Among RP speakers, I find it currently the most reliable Shibboleth to identify Londoners (Take the realization of /ʌ/ in "governour" here as a reference for modern London accent; this isn't an RP speaker but many London RP speakers realize /ʌ/ close to this and now compare it to "governour" as pronounced by TopQuark on forvo). Already in Jones' days, the symbol /ʌ/ was only an approximation. It was already back then in between back and central.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> I find it currently the most reliable Shibboleth to identify Londoners (Take the realization of /ʌ/ in "governour" here as a reference for modern London accent; this isn't an RP speaker but many London RP speakers realize /ʌ/ close to this and now compare it to "governour" as pronounced by TopQuark on forvo). Already in Jones' days, the symbol /ʌ/ was only an approximation. It was already back then in between back and central.


If you are talking about the vowel in cup, up, come moving to [ɐ] I agree with you, but I wouldn't consider that an "o like vowel".  I also don't think it is necessarily only Londoners (or even Englismen for that matter) who do this.  I think it is sporadically appearing in many different places.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> If you are talking about the vowel in cup, up, come moving to [ɐ] I agree with you, but I wouldn't consider that an "o like vowel".  I also don't think it is necessarily only Londoners (or even Englismen for that matter) who do this.  I think it is sporadically appearing in many different places.


Don't get me wrong, I agree that modern /ʌ/ is close to [ɐ]. I am just saying identification of the two isn't a general "contemporary RP" characteristic. It has indeed in nothing to do with o-sounds. I used this just as an illustration to take this analysis with a grain of salt Nino's statement "This is the best transcription of contemporary RP that I've ever read" sounds a bit weird to me, although I agree with the tendencies described there.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> Don't get me wrong, I agree that modern /ʌ/ is close to [ɐ]. I am just saying identification of the two isn't a general "contemporary RP" characteristic. It has indeed in nothing to do with o-sounds. I used this just as an illustration to take this analysis with a grain of salt Nino's statement "This is the best transcription of contemporary RP that I've ever read" sounds a bit weird to me, although I agree with the tendencies described there.



Yes, I understood very well that you meant it was close not exact.  No two sounds are exactly the same anyway.  It's moving in the direction of some sort of "a" like sound.  It wouldn't be RP, but that accent might disappear sometime in the future if it continues to lose its prestige.

By the way [gəd bək] seems really weird to me.  I can't even force myself to pronounce it that way.


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## berndf

[ə] is a terrible transcription. He meant [ɨ] or [ɪ̈], similar to the e in AmE "sedan".


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> [ə] is a terrible transcription. He meant [ɨ] or [ɪ̈], similar to the e in AmE "sedan".



Ok,  "gid bik" I can imagine (some US west coast, Australia), maybe fronted a little bit and rounded somewhat.


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## berndf

Many younger BrE speakers hardly round it at all.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Don't get me wrong, I agree that modern /ʌ/ is close to [ɐ].



It's true the contrary. Queen Elizabeth's /ʌ/ in 1940 was an [ɐ] but when (today) "flat a" (in South Britain), /æ/, is almost equal to [ä], it's normal that /ʌ/ moves towards [ɜ]. 
It would be impossible to distinguish between [ä] and [ɐ] ("cat" would sounds almost equal to "cut"). They would be too similar. 



merquiades said:


> By the way [gəd bək] seems really weird to me.  I can't even force myself to pronounce it that way.



Anyway [gɵd bɵk] (not [gəd bək]) is the most similar sound for the "short u", today (there's no doubt). 

http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/foot_1 

I hardly hear there an [ʊ], neither in the BE sample nor in the AmE sample (it would be perfect for a North English accent). It sounds more central. 
 Dictionaries are, simply, out of date and they won't help foreign students if they don't update their transcriptions.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Anyway [gɵd bɵk] (not [gəd bək]) is the most similar sound for the "short u", today (there's no doubt).
> 
> http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/foot_1
> 
> I hardly hear there an [ʊ], neither in the BE sample nor in the AmE sample (it would be perfect for a North English accent). Dictionaries are, simply, out of date and they won't help foreign students if they don't update their transcriptions.



I don't know what you mean.  I listened to the learners dictionary and the vowel in foot [ʊ] seems accurate, the same as it has always been and still is pronounced by most people.



> it's normal that /ʌ/ moves towards [ɜ].


  The vowel like in "up" pronounced [ɜp]?  I would say moving more towards [ap]


Cat and Cut are distinguished by all speakers.  Of the two it is the latter that is closer to Italian [a], if we can really talk about closer.


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## Nino83

I think it's difficult for us to agree.  
For my ears the [ɵ] symbol fits better. 
For the /ʌ/ I agree that is somewhat lower than [ɜ] but higher than [ɐ]. I think that the nearest vowel to Italian [ä] is British /æ/ than British /ʌ/. 
Anyone has his pair of ears.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> It's true the contrary. Queen Elizabeth's /ʌ/ in 1940 was an [ɐ] but when (today) "flat a" (in South Britain), /æ/, is almost equal to [ä], it's normal that /ʌ/ moves towards [ɜ].
> It would be impossible to distinguish between [ä] and [ɐ] ("cat" would sounds almost equal to "cut"). They would be too similar.


I am sorry, but this is simply silly. Nobody ever claimed that /ʌ/ was about to become a front vowel. The question is only how much "backness" it has left. [ä] and [ɐ] are distinguishable, maybe not in your language but in mine it certainly is.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> For my ears the [ɵ] symbol fits better.



Are you really talking about this sound [ɵ] 
I don't even think there is anything close to that in English.  It reminds me vaguely of the French vowel in "feu" but not exactly the same.
You are right.  I don't think we are hearing the same thing.
So giving "foot" this vowel would seem to me like trying to make it sound closer to "feutre" in French.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Are you really talking about this sound [ɵ]


There is certainly a diacritic missing. What is means is [ʊ̈], i.e. /ʊ/ is either [ɪ̈] or [ʊ̈], depending on how much rounding is left.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> So giving "foot" this vowel would seem to me like trying to make it sound closer to "feutre" in French.



British Library (here, http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/received-pronunciation/vowel-sounds-rp/, there is an example of "good" pronounced [gɵd]) associates it with "contemporary female RP" but I hear this pronunciation quite often. 



merquiades said:


> Cat and Cut are distinguished by all speakers. Of the two it is the latter that is closer to Italian [a], if we can really talk about closer.



When I hear a minimal pair, for example "batter/butter" (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/batter_1 http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/butter_1, the British version, the American version is clearly an [æ]) the first has, for my Italian ear, an [ä] sound, as in "casa", while the second has an audible higher sound.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> British Library (here, http://www.bl.uk/learning/langlit/sounds/case-studies/received-pronunciation/vowel-sounds-rp/, there is an example of "good" pronounced [gɵd]) associates it with "contemporary female RP" but I hear this pronunciation quite often.


  The lady says "I think it's quite gId at the moment", with the same rounded fronted sound that I've heard from West Coast Americans and Australians.



> When I hear a minimal pair, for example "batter/butter" (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionarie...glish/batter_1 http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionarie...glish/butter_1, the British version, the American version is clearly an [æ]) the first has, for my Italian ear, an [ä] sound, as in "casa", while the second has an audible higher sound.


 Sounds like the same vowel to me, [æ] in both cases, but the so-called AE woman draws it out longer for some reason.  The vowel in "butter" sounds the same to me in both variants they give.  It is raised.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> The lady says "I think it's quite gId at the moment", with the same rounded fronted sound that I've heard from West Coast Americans and Australians.



I hear some lip rounding that is absent in the _ sound. For this reason I find Lindsay's transcription very useful (for me, for what I hear). 



merquiades said:



			Sounds like the same vowel to me, [æ] in both cases, but the so-called AE woman draws it out longer for some reason.
		
Click to expand...


For me the American one is clearly higher, towards [ɛ]. 
I'm surpsised that you don't hear any difference.  
It seems clear that native speakers of different languages have different perceptions.  



berndf said:



			There is certainly a diacritic missing. What is means is [ʊ̈], i.e. /ʊ/ is either [ɪ̈] or [ʊ̈], depending on how much rounding is left.
		
Click to expand...


Ah, ok. So the difference was just the "height"?_


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I hear some lip rounding that is absent in the _ sound. For this reason I find Lindsay's transcription very useful (for me, for what I hear). _


_ Like I said it just seems wrong to me for the sound I hear.  The girl is saying gId



			For me the American one is clearly higher, towards [ɛ]. 
I'm surpsised that you don't hear any difference.  
It seems clear that native speakers of different languages have different perceptions. 

Click to expand...

Listen to gladly and see if you still hear such a difference.  In "batter" the [t] sound of those speakers is very different.  That's what you might be hearing.,_


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> Sounds like the same vowel to me, [æ] in both cases, but the so-called AE woman draws it out longer for some reason.


In AE, /æ/ and /ɛ/ are closes than in modern BrE. Length plays in important part in differentiating the two. /æ/ is longer than /ɛ/. The samples exaggerate the difference a bit. The BrE /æ/ in this sample is in between the modern southern and the (traditional) northern realizations (compare x_WoofyWoo_x's and the Scots sample the here).


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Like I said it just seems wrong to me for the sound I hear.  The girl is saying gId



According to wikipedia it seems that there are no accents in which the [ɪ], front vowel, is used for the "short u" (while [ɪ̈] and [ʊ̈], central vowels, are listed, for words such "good" in Southeastern English, in Lodge 2009, which are very close to [ɵ], central vowel, and the same [ɵ] is present in younger RP "female" speakers, i.e in the Southeast England according to British Library). 



merquiades said:


> Listen to gladly and see if you still hear such a difference.  In "batter" the [t] sound of those speakers is very different.  That's what you might be hearing.,



Yes, in "glady" there's no difference but in "can" (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/can_1) the difference is audible (it could depend on the age of the speaker, because the lowering of the British /æ/ started in 1970 so probably the man of "gladly" has an higher /æ/).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Yes, in "glady" there's no difference but in "can" (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/can_1) the difference is audible (it could depend on the age of the speaker, because the lowering of the British /æ/ started in 1970 so probably the man of "gladly" has an higher /æ/).


Coming back to the topic of the thread: I am sure you realized that on this page, there is not a trace of the alleged raising of /ɒ/ to [ɔ] (in _cannot_).


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> Coming back to the topic of the thread: I am sure you realized that on this page, there is not a trace of the alleged raising of /ɒ/ to [ɔ] (in _cannot_).



It's higher than American "caught" and "thought" (http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/caught, http://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/thought) and it's not as open as Queen Elizabeth's "tomorrow" was in 1940 (in her first speech).


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> ..and it's not as open as Queen Elizabeth's "tomorrow" was in 1940 (in her first speech).


That has never been characteristic of RP. Jones described the "short o", for which used the symbol /ɔ/ rather than /ɒ/, as near open and not as open. He described /ɔ:/ as mid open.

I've always agreed that modern RP realizations of /ɔ:/ include [o:] but I maintain that [ɔ:] is valid as well (that's why I wrote [ɔ:]~[o:] earlier in the tread). This is possible because no /o:/ monophthong exist with which it could possibly clash. The range of possible realizations of /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/ overlap somewhat in quality in the vincinity of cardinal [ɔ]. This is possible without confusion because, contrary to AmE, there is an unmistakable quantity difference between the two phonemes in RP.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> This is possible without confusion because, contrary to AmE, there is an unmistakable quantity difference between the two phonemes in RP.



Yes, as the unrounding of the [ɒ] was possible in AmE because of the rhotic accent (it would be hard to distinguish /cart/ from /cot/ without /r/, seeing that the quantitative difference was lost in US). 

And what about the /ɒ/ of New England? Is it lower than the Southern British (and Scottish) /ɒ/?


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> And what about the /ɒ/ of New England? Is it lower than the Southern British (and Scottish) /ɒ/?


Maybe. But I would rather describe it as having less variability because of the missing length distinction between /ɒ/ and /ɔ/. _Boston_ with [ɔ] sounds wrong in Bostonian accent whereas in RP it doesn't matter so much.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> Maybe. But I would rather describe it as having less variability because of the missing length distinction between /ɒ/ and /ɔ/. _Boston_ with [ɔ] sounds wrong in Bostonian accent whereas in RP it doesn't matter so much.



Thank you. 
And also [kɔt] for /caught/ would be wrong in Bostonian accent (I read just now that there is the cot-caught merger, so /cot/ and /caught/ are pronounced [kɒt]) with no difference between /ɒ/ and /ɔ/.


----------



## berndf

There are accents with and without cot-caught merger in the Massachusetts Bay area. I must confess I am not sure where the borders run (regional, social, age?). Maybe a local can help.


----------



## merquiades

Here is a nicely written blog post on the caught-cot merger.  I can see how they would merge.  I would pronounce one longer and with more force than the other, but not with the diphthong.


----------



## Nino83

After seeing the situation in most English accents, I can say (correct me if I'm wrong) that there is no English accent which has 3 "o-like" monophthongs. 



*Dublin accent is similar to RP. 

As one can see, in accents in which there is the "conservative" monophthong (for the ME long /ɔː/, as in "coat"), there is the cot-caught merger (in GA there is the father-bother merger, so the "caught" vowel doesn't merge with the "cot-father" vowel). 

So, basically, in English there are two sounds: an "open o" for "cot" and "caught" and a "closed o" for "coat", while in RP there is an "open o" for "cot", a "closed o" for "caught" and a diphthong for "coat". 

So, to be understood, one need*s* to have two sound*s* for the o-like monophthongs. 

N.B. 

In Northern English the "cot" vowel is short while the "caught" vowel is longer, so there is the cot-caught merger (they differ in quantity). 
In Northern Cities the "cot-father" vowel moved (fronting), so there is no cot-caught merger. 
Anyway, from a quality point of view, these accents have two o-like vowels (one open and one closed).


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## berndf

In RP it makes no sense to describe the two phonemes only quality-wise. The distinction is between long and short. Everything else is minor realization variation. In front of /r/ there is only one phoneme.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> In RP it makes no sense to distinguish the two phonemes quality-wise. The distinction is between long and short.



So, you'd say that for these vowels, RP is similar to Northern English (with only a quantitative difference between "cot" and "caught")?


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## berndf

There are all sorts of realization variations but they are minor compared to the quantity difference which is decisive for phoneme separation.


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> There are all sorts of realization variations but they are minor compared to the quantity difference which is decisive for phoneme separation.



Exactly what I was thinking but looking for the proper wording.  Length is important.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Exactly what I was thinking but looking for the proper wording. Length is important.



Yes, but only in England, Australia and New Zealand, not in US (included Boston, which has the cot-caught merger), Canada, Scotland, Ireland and urban West Country (Bristol).


----------



## sound shift

berndf said:


> There are all sorts of realization variations but they are minor compared to the quantity difference which is decisive for phoneme separation.


Well, if I say "cot" with an exaggeratedly long vowel, it doesn't come out as "caught". There's a definite difference in quality. As far as I am aware, my pronunciation is close to the RP pronunciation of both "cot" and "caught". My lips are pushed further out for "caught" than they are for "cot".


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Yes, but only in England, Australia and New Zealand, not in US (included Boston, which has the cot-caught merger), Canada, Scotland, Ireland and urban West Country (Bristol).



"caught" is long, "cot" is short even in the US.  For me it's all about length, not quality per se.


----------



## Nino83

sound shift said:


> My lips are pushed further out for "caught" than they are for "cot".



Thank you for the explanation. 



merquiades said:


> "caught" is long, "cot" is short even in the US. For me it's all about length, not quality per se.



So, this is your way to avoid the cot-caught merger. 

Resuming the question, do you (all) know any English accent which has three "o-like" monophthongs (one for "coat", one for "caught" and one for "cot")?


----------



## Hulalessar

Nino83 said:


> Resuming the question, do you (all) know any English accent which has three "o-like" monophthongs (one for "coat", one for "caught" and one for "cot")?



South Asian?


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> So, this is your way to avoid the cot-caught merger.
> 
> Resuming the question, do you (all) know any English accent which has three "o-like" monophthongs (one for "coat", one for "caught" and one for "cot")?



I didn't know of this merger until earlier in this thread.  It occurs in the western half of the United States.  I have listened to some Californians and it appears that like the long vowel is shortened.  While eavesdropping in the metro I heard "I thot so!".  But this type of merger could not occur in the inland north area (say around Chicago) anyway because "cot" there is pronounced /kat/ or /kæt/ with unrounded lips so even if "caught" is shortened there would be no merger.  I believe in that area the diphthong in "no" is undone if it is in the middle of the word, maybe in Canada too.  Thus you could have three monophthongs there:  coat as /kot/, caught as /kɔt/ and cot as /kat/ or /kæt/.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Thus you could have three monophthongs there:  coat as /kot/, caught as /kɔt/ and cot as /kat/ or /kæt/.



Yes, you're right (this is what I wrote in the photo I attached in comment #96)

View attachment 13955
But in Northern cities there is the father-bother merger, so the "cot" vowel is not an o-like vowel (but an a-like one). 
So, they have a "closed o" in "coat" and an "open o" in "caught". 

A curiosity. What do you think about Obama's accent? I remember that some time ago I noticed that his "short o" in "problem" was a lot similar to the Italian "a". Has he a typical accent of Chicago (with the Northern cities shift) or do you think that his accent is not too strong?


----------



## Dan2

Some comments on posts from the last few days...



Nino83 said:


> As one can see, in accents in which there is the "conservative" monophthong (for the ME long /ɔː/, as in "coat"), there is the cot-caught merger


Hi Nino.  Monophthongal /o/ for the "coat" vowel is common in Scotland and Ireland.  You seem to be assuming (as suggested by your chart) that all these speakers have the cot-caught merger.  I wasn't aware of that, and you might want to verify that assumption.


Nino83 said:


> ...in GA there is the father-bother merger, so the "caught" vowel doesn't merge with the "cot-father" vowel).


I don't understand the "so" (= "therefore") here.  Millions of Americans have both the father-bother merger and the cot-caught merger, so it doesn't follow that if you have the first you can't have the second. (That leaves the question of whether one can have the cot-caught merger and still be said to speak "GA".  For now I would say that GA does NOT include this merger, but others may disagree.)


Nino83 said:


> In Northern English the "cot" vowel is short while the "caught" vowel is longer, so there is the cot-caught merger (they differ in quantity).


If they differ in quantity there is no merger.  Is there a typo where you wrote "so there is the cot-caught merger"?


sound shift said:


> Well, if I say "cot" with an exaggeratedly long vowel, it doesn't come out as "caught". There's a definite difference in quality. As far as I am aware, my pronunciation is close to the RP pronunciation of both "cot" and "caught".


This is my perception of "standard British English" too: a very noticeable length difference between these two words but also a very noticeable quality difference (which is reflected in the standard IPA transcriptions).  Which is more important perceptually I can't say.


merquiades said:


> "caught" is long, "cot" is short even in the US.


Hi merquiades. Can we agree that it would have been better to write "even in *parts* of the US"?  We know that there is a lot of variation in the US w/r/t the vowels in these two words, so general statements are dangerous, and in particular, tens of millions Americans have a full merger of these two word classes (no difference in either length or quality, and inability to distinguish one from the other within the merger dialect).


merquiades said:


> "caught" is long, "cot" is short even in the US. *For me it's all about length, not quality per se.*


That's interesting, and I don't doubt what you say. But it seems most common to me that Americans without the cot-caught merger have distinctly different vowel qualities for the two vowels (typically unrounded vs rounded and some tongue position difference) but there certainly could be exceptions.  (Besides my own perceptions, note that American dictionaries use different vowel-quality symbols for the two vowels.)


Nino83 said:


> What do you think about Obama's accent? ... Has he a typical accent of Chicago (with the Northern cities shift) or do you think that his accent is not too strong?


I don't hear him as having a "typical Chicago accent".  And you wouldn't expect him to: He spent most of his linguistically important years in Hawaii and outside the US.  I think he was in his mid-20's by the time he moved to Chicago.  (He doesn't have the cot-caught merger, but we don't need Chicago to explain that.)


----------



## berndf

sound shift said:


> Well, if I say "cot" with an exaggeratedly long vowel, it doesn't come out as "caught". There's a definite difference in quality. As far as I am aware, my pronunciation is close to the RP pronunciation of both "cot" and "caught". My lips are pushed further out for "caught" than they are for "cot".


That is understood. Quality and Quantity differences always interact. But one shouldn't lose sight of the forest for the trees and know what is the primary and what is the supporting distinction. For this phoneme pair, quality comes only third in significance after quantity and tenseness/laxness.


----------



## Nino83

Dan2 said:


> Hi Nino.  Monophthongal /o/ for the "coat" vowel is common in Scotland and Ireland.  You seem to be assuming (as suggested by your chart) that all these speakers have the cot-caught merger.  I wasn't aware of that, and you might want to verify that assumption.



The cot-caught merger is reported by "Scobbie, James M; Gordeeva, Olga B.; Matthews, Benjamin (2006)" for Scotland and "Raymond Hickey, John Benjamins 2005" for the Republic of Ireland. 



Dan2 said:


> Millions of Americans have both the father-bother merger and the cot-caught merger, so it doesn't follow that if you have the first you can't have the second.



Hi Dan. I'm wondering if there is an English accent which has three distinct "o" monophthongs. In US almost all speakers have the father-bother merger this is why the vowel of "cot" is essentially an "a-type". In GA there are two "o" monophthong, a closed one for "coat" and an open one for "caught". "Cot" has an "a" monophthong (it's not an "o" in phonological terms"). Who has the cot-caught merger has an "a"  in US, a "near-open o" in Boston and Canada and a "mid-open o" in Scotland and Ireland. 



Dan2 said:


> If they differ in quantity there is no merger.  Is there a typo where you wrote "so there is the cot-caught merger"?



Yes, there is a typo.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> A curiosity. What do you think about Obama's accent? I remember that some time ago I noticed that his "short o" in "problem" was a lot similar to the Italian "a". Has he a typical accent of Chicago (with the Northern cities shift) or do you think that his accent is not too strong?


 Obama is not from Chicago.  He adopted the city as an adult.  His wife hails from that area.  The president grew up on Hawaii, raised by grandparents from the Midwestern area of the US (Kansas) and also spent part of his childhood in Indonesia.  Before arriving in Chicago he had gone to university in Los Angeles and Harvard (Massachusetts).  To my ears his accent is scholarly sounding but not particularly regional.  Definitely not Chicago though.  
Hilary Clinton has a Chicago accent.



> Millions of Americans have both the father-bother merger and the cot-caught merger, so it doesn't follow that if you have the first you can't have the second.


 That was in reference to people who have completed the Great Lake vowel shift. They keep cot and caught as distinct in Chicago.


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## Nino83

Reading some comments it seems that (almost) nobody read the .jpg I attached.  



merquiades said:


> To my ears his accent is scholarly sounding but not particularly regional. Definitely not Chicago though.
> Hilary Clinton has a Chicago accent.



Thank you. I'll pay attention to Clinton's speech.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> Reading some comments it seems that (almost) nobody read the .jpg I attached.
> Thank you. I'll pay attention to Clinton's speech.



You can search Hillary Clinton with Diane Sawyer Interview 6-9-14 for audio material


----------



## Nino83

A little correction about Irish English. 
In the Republic of Ireland "cot" and "caught" have the same quality (height) but the "caught" vowel is longer (they differ in quantity, like in Northern English). There is a "closed o" monophthong for "coat" and an "open o" monophthong for "cot" (shorter) and "caught" (longer). 

https://www.uni-due.de/IERC/phonology.htm#sets 

In Scotland there is the merger between "cot" and "caught". 



> Another effect of Aitken's Law on SSE is that whereas most other forms of standard English retain traces of the historical grouping of the English vowels into a' long' and a' short' set, the loss of this in SSE has led to the absence of several phonemic distinctions preserved in other accents of the language. Cam and calm, *cot and caught*, pull and pool are characteristically *homophonous* in SSE. It is interesting to note that Scottish accents which do incorporate one or more of those distinctions do so in a definite order. Scottish speakers who differentiate between two varieties of open vowel (i.e. make a distinction corresponding to the /ae/-/a:/ of RP) are not uncommon, a *cot-caught distinction is notably rarer*.
> Such distinctions may be the result of direct English influence on the speech of individuals but are not necessarily so; and when they are not this, but are institutionalised features of native Scottish accents [...] the differences are much less extreme than in other accents [...]  dawn when distinguished from Don has *nothing of the over-rounding characteristic* of southern English accents



The Cambridge History of the English Language Vol. 5 p. 81 

Also in Scottish English "cot" and "caught" have the same quality also for those few speakers who pronounce "caught" with a longer vowel (like in Northern and Irish English). 

It seems that there is no English accent with three "o" monophthongs that differ in quality. There are two heights: mid-open (near-open in Canada and Boston) and mid-closed. The US vowel of "cot" is open and unrounded (it is a back "a").


----------



## Nino83

After looking at minimal pairs, I think that it's normal that in rhotic accents there is the cot-caught merger (excluding GA), because there are, more or less, 34 minimal pairs (without counting inflections), while in non-rhotic accents (where there is the merger in quality, i.e height, backness and lip rounding, not in quantity) it is sufficient to lenghten the vowel to distinguish between "con" and "corn" (more or less 120 minimal pairs in non-rhotic accents). 
So, if one excludes Southern England, Australia and New Zealand, these two vowels (Middle English "au" and short "o") merged (in quality and quantity) in all rhotic accents (plus Boston) and merged in quality in Northern English and Irish English. In the US (the only English country where there is the father-bother merger) there are areas in transition (but, I repeat that the American short "o" is, in fact, a short back "a").


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> The US vowel of "cot" is open and unrounded (it is a back "a").


 It might not be extremely rounded but there is generally some rounding of the lips.  That obviously doesn't apply to those who say "cat" for "cot".

Did you make a list of these "34 minimal pairs"? It would be interesting to see that.
"con" and "corn" don't have the same vowel.


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## Nino83

http://www.lemoda.net/english/minpairs/ (those without "r" in coda)

body/bawdy, box/balks, chock/chalk, clod/clawed, cocking/calking, cod/cawed, col/caul, collar/caller, coral/choral, cot/caught, Dolly/Dawley, don/dawn, folly/Fawley, fond/fawned, gods/gauds, got/ghat, hock/hawk, knot/naught, knotty/naughty, Lodz/lauds, mod/Maud, moll/maul, nod/gnawed, notch/nautch, odd/awed, ox/auks, pod/pawed, pond/pawned, rot/wrought, SALT/salt, sot/sought, stock/stalk, tot/taught, yon/yawn 



merquiades said:


> It might not be extremely rounded but there is generally some rounding of the lips. That obviously doesn't apply to those who say "cat" for "cot".



But phonetic tables say that US "cot" and RP "cart" have the same lip rounding. 




merquiades said:


> "con" and "corn" don't have the same vowel.



In fact this is a minimal pair (it's known that Middle English short "o" raised to [ɔː] before "r". There is no contrast between /ɒ/ /ɔː/ before "r", except for some words*). 
In Northern and Irish English these two vowels have the same quality (not quantity). These two vowels are the same also in Scottish English and Canadian English (in quality and quantity). 

*For example in GA only five words (borrow, morrow, sorry, sorrow, tomorrow) have an /ɒ/ before intervocalic "r" but before "r" in syllable coda there's no opposition between /ɒ/ and /ɔː/.


----------



## aefrizzo

Nino83 said:


> http://www.lemoda.net/english/minpairs/ (those without "r" in coda)
> ... Lodz/lauds, ...


Just for fun. If you are referring to the town of Lodz (Poland), I am afraid Polish speaking people will not agree.
Admittedly L of Lodz should be written with a sign I do not find on my keyboard.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> http://www.lemoda.net/english/minpairs/ (those without "r" in coda)
> 
> body/bawdy, box/balks, chock/chalk, clod/clawed, cocking/calking, cod/cawed, col/caul, collar/caller, coral/choral, cot/caught, Dolly/Dawley, don/dawn, folly/Fawley, fond/fawned, gods/gauds, got/ghat, hock/hawk, knot/naught, knotty/naughty, Lodz/lauds, mod/Maud, moll/maul, nod/gnawed, notch/nautch, odd/awed, ox/auks, pod/pawed, pond/pawned, rot/wrought, SALT/salt, sot/sought, stock/stalk, tot/taught, yon/yawn


  Very interesting and useful list, Nino!  I've read this aloud and it's clear to me that I do not have any sign of this merger, even though some of the words I'm not sure how I pronounce them as they are not in my vocabulary.  It is true besides the second word being longer the lips are more rounded than for the first.  Now, just a note that I say "Maud" with the same vowel in "note"





> But phonetic tables say that US "cot" and RP "cart" have the same lip rounding.


 I'm not sure about the vowel rounding in RP for "cart".  I don't round it at all and it is similar to the vowel in "apartment".

 



> In fact this is a minimal pair (it's known that Middle English short "o" raised to [ɔː] before "r". There is no contrast between /ɒ/ /ɔː/ before "r", except for some words*).
> In Northern and Irish English these two vowels have the same quality (not quantity). These two vowels are the same also in Scottish English and Canadian English (in quality and quantity).


 I suppose I would need to hear these sounds to believe them.  I guess I might have heard some Irish accent where people say Cork as "kaarrk" or something similar with some kind of retroflex r, but this is coming from my personal memory bank, so it might be off. 



> *For example in GA only five words (borrow, morrow, sorry, sorrow, tomorrow) have an /ɒ/ before intervocalic "r" but before "r" in syllable coda there's no opposition between /ɒ/ and /ɔː/.


 It is interesting you brought this up, because I have noticed GREAT variation in this "orr" vowel among American speakers, even those living in the same area.  It ranges from the a broad long /a/ as in father, the /ɔ/ in thought, even a closed /o/ as in coat, some people say it longer, others shorter, and there are probably numerous intermediate versions.  There is so much variety, it is also very apparent and a frequent subject of conversation.  Americans who meet each other often question what is the correct pronunciation for "Oregon" and "Florida" for example, and sometimes they ask one another to change their pronunciation.  
I just saw you said something about those 5 words, I don't know why you limit it to them.  There are many more.  Maybe because there are two rr?
This orr variation is so interesting it might deserve its own thread.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> But phonetic tables say that US "cot" and RP "cart" have the same lip rounding.


We had already established that this does not apply to merquiades' accent which is north-eastern. In GA, both vowels are non-rounded whereas in NE the vowel of "cot" is rounded.


----------



## Nino83

merquiades said:


> It is true besides the second word being longer the lips are more rounded than for the first.



So your accent is similar to RP on this matter. 



merquiades said:


> I guess I might have heard some Irish accent where people say Cork as "kaarrk" or something similar



Yes, as you can see  here in Popular Dublin, Rural South-West/West and Southern Irish English. 



merquiades said:


> It is interesting you brought this up, because I have noticed GREAT variation in this "orr" vowel among American speakers, even those living in the same area.



 Here there is a chart. In Boston and regional Mid-Atlantic American English there are more words with short "o" before intervocalic "r". 



berndf said:


> We had already established that this does not apply to merquiades' accent which is north-eastern. In GA, both vowels are non-rounded whereas in NE the vowel of "cot" is rounded.



Yes, I intended to say GA  

In general, putting aside the "o" vowels before "r" in syllable coda, there are very few minimal pairs between "cot" and "caught" vowel in English.


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> In general, putting aside the "o" vowels before "r" in syllable coda, there are very few minimal pairs between "cot" and "caught" vowel in English.


I am not sure; the list in #117 is far from complete. E.g., a very elementary one, _not/naught_, is missing.


----------



## Nino83

berndf said:


> E.g., a very elementary one, _not/naught_, is missing.



It is listed: knot/naught ("not" = "knot").


----------



## berndf

Nino83 said:


> It is listed: knot/naught ("not" = "knot").


Right, I looked only under "n". My mistake.


----------



## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> So your accent is similar to RP on this matter.


 I don't think so.  The British sound is more closed, more rounded and even longer in my opinion.




> Yes, as you can see  here in Popular Dublin, Rural South-West/West and Southern Irish English.


Okay, I shall have a look at that.  I'm not used to hearing these accents.





> Here there is a chart. In Boston and regional Mid-Atlantic American English there are more words with short "o" before intervocalic "r".


All right, I suppose that means I speak Mid-Atlantic style.





> Yes, I intended to say GA


 One day I will open a thread to protest the GA term.  I believe few people in the US speak that way, everyone has an accent. It would appear that it corresponds to the way people speak in this rural area so it's not generalized. They ought to call it Mid-western.  If that term were used in the US people would be really offended. But I am making no attempt to hijack this thread. 



> In general, putting aside the "o" vowels before "r" in syllable coda, there are very few minimal pairs between "cot" and "caught" vowel in English.


 Yes, I noticed that too.  One of the words of the pair is generally not so commonly used.  There are exceptions though:  stock/ stalk makes a big difference.


----------



## berndf

merquiades said:


> One day I will open a thread to protest the GA term.


_GA _is a fairly well defined term by now. I is defined as an accent that is perceived by the majority of speaker as _void of regional characteristics_. As such it is the basis for phonetic transcriptions in dictionaries and TV and movie actors and anouncers receive special training to maintain that accent (not always but often). From there it radiates into actual every day usage reinforcing the perception of being _void regional characteristics _and plays a similar role as _RP_ in British English, _Hochdeutsch _in German and _français standard _in French.


----------



## Dan2

Nino83 said:


> I'm wondering if there is an English accent which has three distinct "o" monophthongs. In US almost all speakers have the father-bother merger *this is why* the vowel of "cot" is essentially an "a-type".


Yes, for most Americans "cot" has an "a-type" vowel, but this fact doesn't follow from the merger.  "bother" and "father" could have merged thru the rounding of the "father" vowel! (Or "cot" could've unrounded without merging with "father".) So "cot" is [a] not "because of the merger" but because the "short o" vowel became unrounded in the dialect that became most common in Amer Eng.  (You say the above in a couple of different places, and I think it's worth being clearer about this.)


Nino83 said:


> After looking at minimal pairs, I think that it's normal that in rhotic accents there is the cot-caught merger (excluding GA), because there are, more or less, 34 minimal pairs


Clearer: "because there are ONLY 34 minimal pairs".  Your argument appears to be that since there are so few minimal pairs in rhotic dialects, the merger doesn't cause excessive confusion and thus is to be expected.  But your argument is greatly weakened by having to exclude GA.  And I think there are also a lot of British Isles speakers who are rhotic and non-mergers.


Nino83 said:


> So, if one excludes Southern England, Australia and New Zealand, these two vowels (Middle English "au" and short "o") merged (in quality and quantity) in all rhotic accents (plus Boston) and merged in quality in Northern English and Irish English.


1. You specify "in all rhotic accents" so why do you say "if one excludes Southern England, Australia and New Zealand": these are non-rhotic dialects.

2. This sentence as it stands is not true: these vowels have not merged for the majority of Americans (even tho they have merged for a very significant fraction).


Nino83 said:


> In the US (the only English country where there is the father-bother merger) there are areas in transition


Are you implying that the US is in transition to a universal cot-caught merger? I don't know if that is true.  That dialect _could_ die out or (more likely) remain in the minority.


Nino83 said:


> (but, I repeat that the American short "o" is, in fact, a short back "a").


It's not universally back.  Mid is very common, and the "Northern Cities" vowel is fronted.


merquiades said:


> The US vowel of "cot" is open and unrounded (it is a back "a").
> 
> 
> 
> It might not be extremely rounded but there is generally some rounding of the lips.
Click to expand...

Not for the majority of Americans. (Backing up Bernd, who has made a similar comment.)

A general comment: I enjoy listening to dialects of American English that depart from the most common and applaud those who retain them, so please don't take this the wrong way, merquiades.  But in this thread and others you have made one comment after another about American English that differ from the standard descriptions of Amer Eng and from my own observations (not of myself but of other Americans).  Your dialect is as valid as anyone else's but for people (like Nino, for ex.) who are trying to draw some general conclusions about Amer Eng, your mistaking your own speech as representative of that of most Americans only introduces confusion.


merquiades said:


> That obviously doesn't apply to those who say "cat" for "cot".


I don't think any Americans pronounce "cot" the way the majority of Americans pronounce "cat".  Non-Northern-Cities Americans may misperceive NC "cot" as "cat" because this "cot" is near their "cot"/"cat" boundary, but that's a different story.


merquiades said:


> *For example in GA only five words (borrow, morrow, sorry, sorrow, tomorrow) have an /ɒ/ before intervocalic "r" but before "r" in syllable coda there's no opposition between /ɒ/ and /ɔː/.
> 
> 
> 
> It is interesting you brought this up, because I have noticed GREAT variation in this "orr" vowel among American speakers,... Americans who meet each other often question what is the correct pronunciation for "Oregon" and "Florida" for example, ...
> I just saw you said something about those 5 words, *I don't know why you limit it to them. There are many more.*
Click to expand...

There is confusion here between two different phenomena.  There are a large number of words (like "Oregon", "Florida", "horrible", etc.) where the "or" varies, according to dialect, between roughly [ar] and [or].  What's special about Nino's 5 words ("sorry", etc) is that even speakers who have [or] (approximately) in most "or+vowel" words, have [ar] (approximately) in Nino's 5 words.


merquiades said:


> One day I will open a thread to protest the GA term. I believe few people in the US speak that way, everyone has an accent. It would appear that it corresponds to the way people speak in this rural area so it's not generalized.


I don't think most people are referring to that small rural area when they use the term "General American".  I agree however that the term is not well-defined.


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## berndf

Dan2 said:


> I don't think most people are referring to that small rural area when they use the term "General American". I agree however that the term is not well-defined.


Listening to interviews with professional speech trainers who work for Hollywood, I’ve got a different impression. It seems that in professional use the term is quite well defined. It should maybe be noted that well-definedness isn’t inconsistent with variation as long as it is defined what variations are within the standard and what arn’t.


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## Nino83

Dan2 said:


> Yes, for most Americans "cot" has an "a-type" vowel, but this fact doesn't follow from the merger.  "bother" and "father" could have merged thru the rounding of the "father" vowel!



Do some Americans pronounce "cart" like [kɒɹt]? I thought this was typical of Canadian English (the vowels of "cot" and "caught" merged in [ɒ]),except for Boston (which has the cot-caught merger in [ɒː] but not the father-bother merger). 



Dan2 said:


> But your argument is greatly weakened by having to exclude GA. And I think there are also a lot of British Isles speakers who are rhotic and non-mergers.



In West Country, for example, the accent is rhotic but there is no merger between [ɒ] and [ɔ], but they have the diphthong [oʊ] for the vowel of "goat". 

Putting asaide, for a moment, the cot-caught merger, my argument is this. 
As we know, within a vowel system one vowel is connected to another, i.e the position of a vowel depends, partially, on the position of another vowel (for example, in ME, /oː/ and /eː/ tended to raise making /iː/ and /uː/ split into diphthongs /ɛɪ/ and /oʊ/, later /aɪ/ and /ɑʊ/). 

I noticed that in the accents were there is the diphthong [oʊ] or [əʊ] for "goat" there is space for a closed "o" and an open "o", /ɔː/ [o̞ː] for "caught" and /ɒ/ [ɔ̞] for "cot". 
In the accent where there is a closed "o", i.e [oː], monophthong for "coat", there is no space for two vowels like [o̞ː] and [ɔ̞], which would were too similar and would lead to confusion. 

So, in Scottish English, Northern English and Irish English the vowel of "caught" lowered, merging (in quality, i.e height, backness and rounding) with "cot". The vowel is a "mid-open o", i.e [ɔ̞]. In Canadian English the "caught" vowel lowered, merging with "cot" in a "near-open o" (rounded vowel), i.e [ɒ ̴ ɒ̝]. 
In General American there is not any merger just because the vowel of "cot" lowered from [ɔ̞] to [ɑ], so the lowering of "caught" to [ɔ] didn't lead to a merger. 

In West Country, rothic accent, they have an [oʊ] for "goat", so there is the space for a closed "o" and an open "o", i.e [o̞] for "caught" and [ɔ̞] for "cot" (note that, differently from RP, these two vowels differs in quality but not in quantity, being the accent rhotic). 

The Western American cot-caught merger (for example in California), is due, in my opinion, to the little quantity of minimal pairs and not to the absence of space (there is the space for an [oː] in "coat", an [ɔ] in "caught" and an [ɑ] in "cot". 

So, I think that, except for the US (which are an exception to the rule, because of the lowering of the vowel of "cot"), the cot-caught merger is pushed by the retention of the (long) monophthong for "coat". There is too little space for three "o" monophthongs, i.e [oː], [o̞ː] and [ɔ̞]. 

What do you think about it? 

Are there accents which have all these three vowels, with these heights, [oː], [o̞ː] and [ɔ̞]?


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> Do some Americans pronounce "cart" like [kɒɹt]?


He didn't say anything to that effect. He said that the GA bother-father merger is a consequence of short o unrounding (I would add: plus the loss of phonemic vowel length) and not the other way round.



Nino83 said:


> In West Country, for example, the accent is rhotic but there is no merger between [ɒ] and [ɔ]


There is no /ɔ/ in this accent except in front of /r/. There is only /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/. In front of /r/ there is only one pheneme and length is non-phenemic there.


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## Nino83

berndf said:


> There is no /ɔ/ in this accept except in front of /r/. There is only /ɒ/ and /ɔ:/. In front of /r/ there is only one pheneme and length is non-phenemic there.



I was referring to the  Bristolian  accent (which doesn't have phonemic lenght). 
My mistake. Take my "West Country accent " as "Bristolian accent". 

The fundamental question I'm asking you is if there is an accent with those three vowels (i.e, mid-closed, mid and mid-open "o").


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## merquiades

berndf said:


> _GA _is a fairly well defined term by now. I is defined as an accent that is perceived by the majority of speaker as _void of regional characteristics_. As such it is the basis for phonetic transcriptions in dictionaries and TV and movie actors and anouncers receive special training to maintain that accent (not always but often). From there it radiates into actual every day usage reinforcing the perception of being _void regional characteristics _and plays a similar role as _RP_ in British English, _Hochdeutsch _in German and _français standard _in French.


 I do not dispute much of what you are saying.  It is certainly true that actors, telemarketers, radio/tv anchormen, travelling salesmen often try to reduce their accent when they work nationwide or outside their region.  They need to pinpoint what is considered strong, harsh or badly perceived in their speech patterns and strive to weaken them.  Northerners have biases about southern accents and vice versa.  Easterners often hate the sound of Western speech. A lot of people find a New York accent aggressive.. etc. Stereotypes abound. Logically if you discard accents that some people might feel negative about, you are left with the Southern Midwestern one which most people do not have a strong opinion about. In accent training what counts is the global impression, there is no intent on imposing the speech of another region. That is exactly what is different with France.  I won't comment on Germany. In France having an accent of any type even in a region where people are supposed to have that accent is a real social and professional handicap. Everyone learns "accent" at school.  There is officially but one way to pronounce an "R" for example.  Not so in the US.  Chicago accent is just fine for whatever you need to do in Chicago and elsewhere.  We have had recent presidents with extremely strong accents (in my opinion, obviously).  There is no official accent in the US.  Go to Kennedy airport and listen to the announcements and see what accent you hear.  It's a far cry from that lady you hear at every train station in France. The umbrella of what is considered correct in the US is very large. Unfortunately that is not at all so with grammar though.
What is referred to here as General American I have no problem with if you call it Midwestern or something else. Check on google for recent pages with the name "General American", making sure you eliminate the insurance company, and there aren't so many, and most are not from the US.




Dan, I am not just talking about the way I speak in my posts. I have met Americans from all realms of life and from many different regions. I have also had years of linguistic training myself and am actually an English language professor so I teach people every day how to pronounce. I have read the studies that say American English is this, that or the other and one vowel is long, short or unrounded...etc. The standard language they describe is artificial and stilted, even surprising at times, and far from my experience. So I can and will continue to comment on it.  I'm not going to let people believe for example that if you say "not" as /na:t/ it is fine, frequent, normal or even desired in America.  Also such statements found on wikipedia saying that there are 5 "or" words pronounced this way, but the rest are another way, and that pretty much all "o" sounds have merged or are merging in the US in some way or another is not only comical it is wrong.  I'll let Nino or whoever decide what is useful for them.


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## berndf

Nino83 said:


> I was referring to the Bristolian accent (which doesn't have phonemic lenght).
> My mistake. Take my "West Country accent " as "Bristolian accent".
> 
> The fundamental question I'm asking you is if there is an accent with those three vowels (i.e, mid-closed, mid and mid-open "o").


Vowel length contrast is generally reduced in West Country accents, rural of city, and many authors therefore omit length marks in transcriptions. But I doubt it is phonemically neutralized as it is in GA. What in my understanding happens in Western Country accents is that length variations of short vowels that would sound odd in other southern accents occur in cases where no confusion with a long vowel would me possible, notably [ɪ]~[ɪ:], but that this would not occur where length remains significant for phoneme distinction, e.g., _gas_ /gæs/ and _glas_ /glæ:s/ (corresponding to RP /glɑ:s/).


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> The Western American cot-caught merger (for example in California), is due, in my opinion, to the little quantity of minimal pairs and not to the absence of space (there is the space for an [oː] in "coat", an [ɔ] in "caught" and an [ɑ] in "cot".


  That is my opinion too.  A merger occurs when there is no longer any practical need to maintain the difference between two phonemes. The list of minimal pairs you compiled is very revealing in this respect.



> So, I think that, except for the US (which are an exception to the rule, because of the lowering of the vowel of "cot"), the cot-caught merger is pushed by the retention of the (long) monophthong for "coat". There is too little space for three "o" monophthongs, i.e [oː], [o̞ː] and [ɔ̞].


 Interesting theory.  Would the long monophthong need to exist in all phonetic environments, example both closed and open syllables, or could it just be in closed syllables, example "coat" but not "low"?


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> Interesting theory.  Would the long monophthong need to exist in all phonetic environments, example both closed and open syllables, or could it just be in closed syllables, example "coat" but not "low"?



I don't know. The first (coat) derives from the ME "long open o" while the second (low) from ME diphthong "ou" (I suppose). Mabye it's easy for ME "ou" words to retain the "old" (diphthongized) sound. 

What I think is that there are more minimal pairs between "coat" and "caught/cot" than between "caught" and "cot", so if the monophthong is retained for "coat", the vowel of "caught" is lowered.


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## merquiades

Nino83 said:


> I don't know. The first (coat) derives from the ME "long open o" while the second (low) from ME diphthong "ou" (I suppose). Mabye it's easy for ME "ou" words to retain the "old" (diphthongized) sound.
> 
> What I think is that there are more minimal pairs between "coat" and "caught/cot" than between "caught" and "cot", so if the monophthong is retained for "coat", the vowel of "caught" is lowered.


 I suppose your theory might be affected by Romance languages where there is an open and closed version of each vowel sound, and it's hard to find room for a third.  Actually many of the consonant or vowel shifts in languages have occurred with the purpose of finding more room, or a clearer distinction. 
I asked the question before because I have heard monophthong [o] or [o:] pronounced by some Americans, rather more from the west than the east or south but usually in an environment like coat, boat, road where the syllable is closed rather than at the end of a word "go, slow".  It would be amazing if that corresponded to the cot/caught merger area.  The vowel in the upper Midwest seems to be moving slightly in the direction towards [a:].  Watch excerpts from the film Fargo to hear this accent.  
To have three phonemes the speaker would need to have flattened all diphthongs to [o] but not have the cot/caught merger or the Great Lakes vowel shift. I don't doubt some people could do this, but where?  Obviously probably not the west for the merger, the north for the vowel shift, and the south for the strong diphthongs. New York/ Philadelphia/ Mid-Atlantic etc. also have a diphthong for the "caught" vowel. Maybe by a process of elimination you can find the accent you are looking for.  This site seems like it could be of use to you.  Scroll down to the bottom.  There are sound bites of people from every state.  Have fun.


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> It would be amazing if that corresponded to the cot/caught merger area.



It is not necessary because in almost all US accents "caught" has a mid-open "o" (i.e [ɔ]) which is quite different from [oː] (and "cot" has, depending on the accent, a near-open vowel, rounded [ɒ] or unrounded [ɑ]. 

Only RP, Australian and New Zealand English have a mid "o" (i.e [o̞ː]) for "caught" and all these three accents have a diphthong for "goat". 

In US the "caught" vowel is lower than in RP, Australian and New Zealand so there is no risk of confusion. 

Thank you for the link  

The [ɔ] for "caught" is confirmed in http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch10_2nd.rev.pdf (page 32). 

The F1 for cardinal (IPA) [ɔ] is 500 Hz and the highest value in US for the vowel of "caught" is 520 Hz. 

So, in US, the "caught" vowel is always lower than in RP and related (Australian and New Zealand) accents. 

The vowel of "cot" is always near-open, F1 from 860 Hz (equal to [a]) to 630 Hz (higher than [ɒ] but lower than [ɔ]). 

Probably, in US there's no accent which has three vowels between cardinal [o] and cardinal [ɔ]. This space is too small. 

EDIT: 

To be more precise, in Australian and New Zealand English there are these vowels: 
"coat" = [əʉ], [ɐʉ] 
"caught" = [oː] 
"cot" = [ɔ] 

So the Australian "caught" is equal to the American "coat" and "cot" is equal to the American "caught". 

If it is difficult to distinguish between [oː] and [o̞ː] (as the lower vowel for "caught" in Scottish, Northern and Irish English demonstrates) it would be impossible for an Australian to have a monophthong for "coat" (unless the vowel for "caught" were lowered).


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## Nino83

I'm writing because during this time I've read other works about it. 

If we're speaking about AmE, there are these sounds*: 
/ɑː/ and /ɒ/ (father/bother) F1 700, F2 1100-1250, IPA [ɑ], canIPA** [ɑ], Italian /a/ F1 800, F2 1280 (in California F2 1100) 
/ɔː/ (caught) F1 600-650 (Midlands 600, California 650), F2 1100 (Midland 1000-1050) IPA [ɔ ̴ ɒ], canIPA [ɔ] (on the demarcation line between [ɔ] and [ɒ]), Italian /ɔ/ F1 520 F2 900 
/oʊ/ (realized [oʷ]), F1 400-450 (Midlands 450) F2 1000-1100, IPA [o] canIPA [o], Italian /o/ F1 420, F2 800. 

In other words, AmE /ɒ/ is similalr to the Italian /a/, /ɔː/ is more open than Italian /ɔ/ and /oʊ/ (the starting point of the diphthong) is equal to the Italian /o/. 
AmE /ʊ/ has the same F1 of /oʊ/ but it is more central (F2 1250-1300) and /ɪ/ has the same F1 of /eɪ/ but more central (F2 1800 instead of 2100-2250). 

In other words, an Italian should pronounce "bot" with an Italian /a/, "bought" with a more open vowel than the Italian /ɔ/ and "boat" (the starting point) with an Italian /o/, "book" with a more central Italian /o/ and "bit" with a more central Italian /e/ (Italian /e/ F1 360 F2 2040, Ame /ɪ/ F1 360 F2 1800). 

In Southern Standard British English: 
/ɒ/ F1 552 F2 986, Italian /ɔ/ F1 520 F2 900, it is a little more open than Italian /ɔ/ 
/ɔː/ F1 452 F2 793, Italian /o/ F1 420, F2 800, IPA [o̞] canIPA [σ] (like Spanish /o/) 
/oʊ/ F1 460 F2 1300, like Spanish /o/ but more central 

SSBE /ʊ/ has F1 400 F2 1550, i.e it is similar to the Italian /o/ but more central (in Lancashire and Liverpool /ʊ/ has F1 490 F2 1120, i.e between Spanish /o/ and Italian /ɔ/ but more central). 
An Italian should pronounce SSBE "bot" with an Italian /ɔ/, "bought" with an Italian /o/ and "boat" (the starting point) with an Italian /o/. 

Those accents that have a long monophthong in "boat" have: 
/ɒ/ F1 578/615 F2 1120/1140 (East Yorkshire/Lancashire), Italian /ɔ/ F1 520 F2 900, more open than Italian /ɔ/ 
/ɔː/ F1 551/571 F2 990/1040 (East Yorkshire/Lancashire), more open than the Italian /ɔ/
/oʊ/ F1 450/530 F2 1200/1130, Italian /o/ F1 420, F2 800, it is like Spanish /o/ but more central. 

So, AmE has two o-like vowels, the open one for "bought" and the closed one (long and a little diphthongal) for "boat", SSBE has two o-like vowels, the open one for "bot" and the middle (long) one for "bought" and a clear diphthong for "boat", Northern English accents have an open one for "bot" and "bought" and a middle/closed one for "boat". 

http://dea.brunel.ac.uk/cmsp/home_yan_qin/intro/formant_comparison_across_accent.htm 
http://www1.ddl.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/fulltext/Ferragne/Ferragne_2010.pdf 
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3432912/ 
http://venus.unive.it/canipa/pdf/HPr_02_English.pdf 

Vowels in New England, Western, Midland, Mid-Atlantic. 

*F1 and F2 of male speakers 
** Canepari's IPA system, it has more symbols, IPA ordinary symbols plus other additional symbols


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## Nino83

merquiades said:


> I asked the question before because I have heard monophthong [o] or [o:] pronounced by some Americans, rather more from the west than the east or south but usually in an environment like coat, boat, road where the syllable is closed rather than at the end of a word "go, slow".  *It would be amazing if that corresponded to the cot/caught merger area*.



"Diphthongization of all long vowels, especially in final position, is the general rule in North America. Monophthongal /e:/ and /o:/ do occur, but only in limited areas." (page 13) 

"The dark red oriented isogloss on Map 13.5 outlines an area similar to that of the GD isogloss: the region of tense, sometimes monophthongal /ey/, defined by an advanced second formant greater than 2200 Hz. It includes the *Prairie provinces of Canada*, along with a large area of the *North Central States in U.S*. It does *not* extend as far west in Canada as *Vancouver*, or as far east as *Ottawa*, and it does *not* include that region of *Wisconsin and Minnesota* where the merger of /æ/ and /ey/ before /g/ is most concentrated. In many respects, this is one of the most conservative regions of North America: the front tense /ey/ is matched by */ow/* in a mid back, *sometimes monophthongal* position." (page 183) 

Labov, The Atlas of North American English 

It coincides with the cot-caught merger area in the US. 

So, in the US where /oʊ/ is almost monophthongal there is the cot-caught merger while in the UK (Northern English), /ɒ/ and /ɔː/ have a similar quality (near open back vowel) but they differ in quantity. 

It seems that hardly there are three different mid back vowels (mid-open, mid and mid-closed) in English or, with more precision, there are not accents with three different o-like monophthongal vowels.


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