The cot–caught merger
/ɔ/ and /ɑ/ are back vowels, where the tongue is low. Before we learn how to pronounce /ɔ/ and /ɑ/, we need to know this fact: in standard American English, many words that used to be pronounced with /ɔ/ are pronounced with /ɑ/. This phenomenon is called the cot–caught merger.
Areas in the US where there is no-merger, ‘cot’ and ‘caught’ are pronounced as /kɑt/ and /kɔt/. But in standard american english, they sound the same, /kɑt/. Due to the merger, in standard American English, these words are homophones:
Homophones due to /ɔ/ and /ɑ/ merger
cot - caught
collar - caller
don (put clothes on) - Don (nickname of Donald) - dawn
knotty - naughty
not - naught
rot - wrought
stock - stalk
tot (very young child) - taught
nod- gnawed
English Pronunciation, the American Way
Pronunciation of /ɔ/
Due to the cot-caught merger, words with the pure phoneme /ɔ/ do not exist. Instead, words with the /ɔ/ sound exist as an r-colored vowel /ɔr/ as in ‘Florida’ and ‘orange.’ The /ɔ/ sound also occurs as a diphthong /ɔɪ/, as in “boy” and “noise.”. Words with /ɔr/ can be challenging if we do not know how to pronounce the /ɔ/ sound: e.g., war, warm, and order. So it is important to know how to pronounce /ɔ/.
/ɔ/ is a medium-low back vowel. It is also a round vowel, meaning that the lips are rounded when saying /ɔ/. To know how to say /ɔ/, it is useful to compare it with sounds that share some similar mechanics. Compared with another round vowel /u/, the lips are not pushed out as much as /u/ since the tongue for /ɔ/ has to be low. To make the tongue low, mechanically speaking, the jaw has to drop. To know how much the jaw has to drop, compare /ɔ/ with another round vowel /o/. /o/ is a mid-high vowel, and /ɔ/ is a mid-low vowel. By the way, /o/, as a pure phoneme, occurs in Korean and French, but not in standard American English, where it occurs only as a diphthong sound, /oʊ/. Since /o/ is a mid-high vowel, the jaw does not drop, but /ɔ/ is a mid-low vowel so the jaw has to drop significantly. /ɔ/ is not an /ɔ/ without the jaw dropping.
/ɔr/ words
These are words with /ɔr/ sound:
with “or”:
boring, corner, foreign, forest, forty, historical, majority, moral, north, orange, origin, priority, short, story, shorter, reporter, supporter, order, border, recorder, core, pore, or, Thor
with “ar”:
quarter, war, warrier, warm, swarm
with “oor”:
door, floor, poor
with “oar”
soar, roar, oar
with “ore” :
ore, swore, wore, before, more
with “our”:
four, pour (poor, pour and pore are homophones)
/ɑ/ words
/ɑ/ should be a pretty straightforward sound for non-native speakers since the sound is common in all languages. It is an unrounded, low back vowel sound. The sound is called the short O sound by American teachers since the sound is commonly found in letter O. The letter A can sometimes make a short 'o' sound too though. These are words with the pronunciation of /ɑ/
with "a":
calm, father, wasp, watch, wash, what, walk, swallow, swap
with "o":
body, bother, clock, cost, doctor, follow, got, holiday, hot, involve, job, lot, model, not, possible, probably, problem, shop, stop, top, borrow, sorry, tomorrow
R-colored /ar/ words
with “ar”
arm, army, art, article, artist, bar, car, card, carpet, charge, charm, chart, dark, department, far, farm, garden, guard, guitar, hard, harm, large, march, mark, market, park, part, partner, party, regard, remark, sharp, smart, star, start, target
with “ear,” and “uar”:
heart, guard
Due to the cot-caught merger, words that used to be pronounced with /ɔ/ are now pronounced with /ɑ/. Consequently, there are no minimal pairs for /ɔ/ and /ɑ/. So we examine minimal pairs with their r-colored vowels.
/ɑr, /ɔr/ minimal pairs
far, four
tart, tort
part, port
farm, form
barn, born
hard, hoard
barred bored
cart court
mart, mort
mar, more
impart, import
depart, deport
car, core
/ar/, /ər/ minimal pairs
far, fur
shark, shirk
star, stir
hard, heard
barn, burn
heart, hurt
cart, Kurt
dart, dirt
farm, firm
park, perk
/ɔr/, /ər/ minimal pairs
for, fur
store, stir
born, burn
short, shirt
form, firm
warm, worm
war, were
torn, turn
bored, bird
court, Kurt
dork, Dirk
pork, perk
course, curse
hoard, heard
hoard, herd
former, firmer
accord, occurred
conform, confirm
course, curse
warrier (he who fights), worrier (he who worries)
/ɔr/ vs /ər/ vs /ar/ comparison sentences
Now that we learned /ɔr/, /ər/ and /ar/, we can pronounce the following tricky words confidently: ‘warm’ and ‘worm’. The key is to know that ‘warm’ has /ɔ/ sound, and ‘worm’ has /ə/ sound.
warm - worm
Today is pretty warm.
Birds eat worms.
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These are comparison sentences with the r-colored vowels, /ɔr/, /ər/ and /ar/.
form - firm - farm
Please fill out the form.
My decision is firm.
Old McDonald had a farm.
born - burn - barn
It was born in a burnt barn.
hoard - herd - hard
She hoards old newspapers.
In an elephant herd, the elders walk in front.
It’s hard.
These are some more r-colored vowel comparison sentences.
Our former boss was a bit firmer when it came to discipline.
It never occurred to me that the U.S. would sign the trade accord.
You have to conform to the rules. If you don't, that will confirm our doubts about you.
A language course should not teach students how to curse.
World wars shouldn’t not happen.
Worriers worry about another World War.
We need warriors, not worriers.
Worms thrive in warm weather.
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