The AW-Sound
We’re talking about the AW-sound now.
This open-mid back rounded vowel, or low-mid back rounded vowel, is represented by the letter ‘ɔ’ - looks like a reversed ‘c’.
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) symbol for this sound is /ɔ/.
In General American English and Canadian English, the [ɔ] sound is the sound in the word ‘THOUGHT’.
Now, I will preface this with a HUGE disclaimer. I live in Canada. This is important because in Canada (as well as a majority of the US, some dialects of English outside of England, etc), the cot-caught merger exists.
What this means is that in Canada, people say COT and CAUGHT the exact same. We don’t distinguish the two.
In some English-speaking places, COT and CAUGHT are pronounced slightly differently but they are DISTINCTLY DIFFERENT.
So to me, because it isn’t a meaningful distinction between [ɔ] and [ɑ], you can take my word with a grain of salt.
Secondly, it highlights an important detail for you, the reader, about whether this sound distinction is important. Where you live in your English-speaking community matters because if you live in a place where CAUGHT ≠ COT, then this matters.
If you live in a place where CAUGHT = COT, then this distinction isn’t worth your time to learn.
Some people would even say it’s an English pronunciation hack to intentionally learn the CAUGHT-COT merger since it works for most of the US and essentially all of Canada.
This is why depending on who you ask, they will tell you different priorities.
SYMBOL
On the IPA vowel chart, it is located on the mid right of the chart.
The Color Vowel® Chart, created by Karen Taylor and Shirley Thompson in 1999, is another visual organizer for spoken English and represents how to learn and think about vowels. It refers to this sound as the ‘ORANGE DOOR’ sound or the ORANGE vowel. Notice the consistent placement on the mid-right corner of each respective chart.
The Color Vowel® Chart, 5th Edition © 2019. ColorVowel.com. Used with Creative Commons licensing (CC BY-NC-ND).
SOUND
To make the AW as in THOUGHT or LAW [ɔ] vowel, the tongue lifts up and shifts back. The lips come forward, flaring a bit. The lips are rounded so you should feel some tension in the cheeks and lip corners.
Compared with the [ɑ] sound, the jaw is slightly more closed and there is lip rounding. So, if you feel pretty comfortable with the AH-sound in FATHER, close your mouth slightly and engage lip rounding.
FEATURES
The [ɔ] sound features are as follows.
Its vowel height is open-mid, also known as low-mid, which means the tongue is positioned halfway between an open vowel (a low vowel) and a mid vowel.
Its vowel backness is back, which means the tongue is positioned back in the mouth without creating a constriction that would be classified as a consonant.
Its roundedness is protruded, which means that the corners of the lips are drawn together, and the inner surfaces exposed.
VISUAL REPRESENTATION
In English, the [ɔ] sound is reflected in spelling in many different ways. Depending on the specific English dialect, it may be written using any of the following letters:
aw - aw, saw, hawk, jaw, yawn, drawer
al - recall, almost, already, alter, ball, call, mall, small, wall
au - author, daughter, launch
a - water, war, quarter
o - wrong, runoff, Don, afford, born, cork, door, floor, fork, horse, lord, more, pork, store, storm, story, sword
ou - thought, brought, fought, sought, court, four, pour
oa - abroad, broad, oar, roar, soar
The reason why I’m especially showing you the different spelling combinations that can create this sound is that there will ALWAYS be exceptions, weird spellings, or other things that impact how reliable the written representation will be.
LISTENING
Now, for the listening example, it isn’t worth me putting a rhyming list because if you merge CAUGHT-COT, it’ll sound the same (because you would see CAUGHT-COT as rhyme-able).
So watch this video to hear the difference.
I can personally hear the difference but it’s not a meaningful difference to me and I wouldn’t go out of my way to enunciate the words differently.
So, your BIGGEST priority here is figuring out if where you are merges CAUGHT and COT or if they keep those two separate. If they keep those two separate, then you should learn the difference.
I’m breaking down every single sound down for you so that you can learn how to produce each sound in English accurately. Sometimes, we’ll have easier sounds and sometimes we’ll have harder sounds.
If you’ve grasped this sound, then great! But if you’ve got a tip that might work for others, or you took a while to produce this sound correct but something clicked for you, let me know down below in the comments. My goal is to have a community know what to do when they’re stuck!
