U.S. English Pronunciation Lesson 18: the vowels /ʌ/ and /ɔ/

U.S. English Pronunciation
Lesson 18: the vowels /ʌ/ and /ɔ/

The vowel sound /ʌ/ is often represented by the letter 'u'. The sound /ɔ/ is frequently represented by the combination 'ou' or 'au' (often followed by a silent 'gh').

Keep in mind as you learn English pronunciation that English spelling is rather unpredictable with a multitude of exceptions and variations. The rules sometimes seem to lack a predictable pattern. Fortunately there are only a limited number of 'phonemes', or sounds. That's why these pronunciation lessons focus on the phonemes and try to give only non-exceptional spelling examples. This should make it easier for you to master the individual sounds as you progress and start to encounter variations and exceptions. Individual phonemes are represented by their International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol between forward slashes: / /. To further simplify things, we will only cover vowel pronunciation in standard U.S. English. We will not cover the multitude of variations that exist in the different U.S. regions or in different countries.



/ʌ/

The vowel sound /ʌ/ is an open-mid back vowel. Play the sound recording* below to get a better idea of its pronunciation.

Practice repeating this sound a few times. Then, practice the following words containing the /ʌ/ sound:

hum
hut
cut
bud
shut
luck
cuff
stuff



/ɔ/

The vowel sound /ɔ/ is also an open-mid back vowel. It is distinguished from the /ʌ/ sound by being a 'rounded' vowel. It is pronounced with the lips rounded. Play the sound recording* below to get a better idea of its pronunciation.

Practice repeating this sound a few times. Then, practice the following words containing the /ɔ/ sound:

caught
fought
bought
brought
cause
caution
ought
author

Note that in some regions of the U.S. it is common to pronounce the /ɑ/ sound [see Lesson 17] the same as the /ɔ/ sound. These speakers would pronounce the words 'cot' and 'caught' exactly the same. There seem to be various sources on the Internet instructing learners that these two sounds are the same. This speech variation, however is not considered to be standard U.S. English pronunciation. Since this portion of the course is teaching you the fundamentals of U.S. English sounds, we suggest you learn the difference now. That way, you will be better prepared to move on to more advanced tasks like accent reduction.

The goal of this course is to help you learn English pronunciation in simple, easy-to-understand terms, while at the same time giving you enough familiarity with technical linguistic concepts to move on to other, more advanced topics. Try reviewing the previous pronunciation lessons (see links to the right).

Next lesson: introduction to the 'dipthongs' -->>



This work by ESLport.com is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

*ESLPort.com is not the original author of the vowel sound recordings used herein. They are used with permission and licensed under the Creative Commons attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. They were obtained from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vowel#Audio_samples. The original author does not endorse ESLPort.com or its use of this recording.