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Some tricky sounds in American English
My question concerns American pronunciation only.
I'm having a little trouble with the following words/sounds:
1) ON, CAUGHT, THOUGHT, VOLUME, RESOLVE.
Is the o-sound in all of these words the same? That's the main thing I want to know, but also, does it sound more like o, a, or the drawn-out in-between sound of "aw"?
2) BOOK
When I pronounce this word, the sound is the same as in "good" or "cook," but it's much easier for me to pronounce those words than this one. With "book" I get almost like a schwa... not an oo-sound, in the sense that I don't protrude my lower jaw a little like I do with the other words. Is that correct?
As for 1), this is a rather complicated issue in North American English. In a traditional standard North American pronunciation, those would be:
[A:n] or [Q:n]
["k_hQ:t]
["TQ:t]
["vA:5ju:m]
[r\I"zA:5v]
(I'm using X-SAMPA http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA by the way.) The [A:] vowel would be an open near-back unrounded vowel, much like the vowel in RP "car". The [Q:] vowel would be an open back rounded vowel, sort of like the vowel in RP "cot" but longer.
However, many speakers, especially in the Western US, would merge these two vowels into one phoneme, whose realization is usually closer to [A:]. This is known as the low-back merger, and it's become so common (it's estimated that at least 40% of Americans have it), that it's increasingly being viewed as a standard variant for General American.
One other consideration is that some speakers - whether they have the low-back merger or not - have allophonic rounding of /A:/ before /l/, causing them to use a vowel more like [Q:] in "volume" and "resolve". So it's possible that a speaker without the low-back merger could use the same vowel in all 5 of these words, or that a speaker with the merger could use one (allophonic) vowel in "on, caught, thought" and another in "volume, resolve" (!).
As for 2), as far as I know, nobody uses a different vowel in "book" than in "good" or "cook". In my speech, the vowels are identical. As for the realization of this vowel, many speakers (like me) use a more conservative vowel [U], that is, a near-close near-back rounded vowel, but for many speakers this vowel may be unrounded and/or fronted. But I don't think there's any allophony that would lead to different vowels in "book" and "good".
They are not the same unless you are "cot caught".
VOLUME, ON and RESOLVE have an "O" sound which is close to an "Ah" sound like the "O" in "John".
CAUGHT AND THOUGHT are pronounced like the O Coffee and are nothing like the previous threw words.
BOOK is altogether a different sound and rhymes with HOOK, LOOK, TOOK and COOK.
GOOD does NOT rhyme with BOOK. Good instead rhymes with Would, Could and Should.
I am not sure what to do with you jaw or what you consider a schwa or OO-sound or anything else, but do hope I was able to help.
Thanks for both replies above.
But here where I live (Baltimore, MD) people pronounce the word "volume" very clearly with an O sound, kind of like "coffee" and "gone."
I have never ever heard "volume" pronounced like "John" (Ah), that's what confused me.
Just for the sake of comparison, here in southeastern Wisconsin there are:
"on" ["a~:n]
"cought" ["k_hQ?]
"taught" ["t_hQ?]
"volume" ["va:M_^ju~:m]
"resolve" [R1:"zQ:Uv_0]
I have somewhat different allophony of the FATHER vowel, as it normally [A] or [Q] before /l/ here when /l/ falls in a coda, but if a following /l/ ends up a following syllable's onset, it is [a] (unless preceded by /r/, /l/, or /w/, aside from a few case like "suave" ["swa:v_0]). However, this is somewhat phonemically fixed, as "resolve" always has [Q] and never [A] here, unlike "doll", which has free variation between [A] and [Q} here (and which has the related word "dolly", which always has [a] here).
Similarly, the vowel in "book", "hook", "look", "took", "cook", "good", "would", "could", "should" /U/ is only slightly fronted here, and is nowhere near being central.
>>BOOK is altogether a different sound and rhymes with HOOK, LOOK, TOOK and COOK.
GOOD does NOT rhyme with BOOK. Good instead rhymes with Would, Could and Should.<<
Just where do you live, exactly? Are you in some part of the UK where the foot-strut split exists but differs from that normally found in most southern English English and North American ENglish dialects?
No, I think Guest #2 was just making the obvious and irrelevant observation that "good" doesn't rhyme with "book" because they have different codas. Of course, Guest #1 wasn't asking about rhyme, but rather about vowel quality.
I actually live in Colorado but grew up in New York City and grew up in a family with Irish immigrant parents so my "accent" might sound a bit "odd".
To me bOOk and gOOd have slightly different vowel sounds that are close but not identical. When I pronounce "book" there is more of a shot O sound but with "good" it's more of an "u-ah" sound. I also am not cot-caught and pronounce Mary, Marry and Merry all sound different. I'm sorry, that's about the best way I can describe it without having to resort to that SAMPA crap for which I have no patience trying to figure out.
Sorry I meant to say
I am also not cot-caught and pronounce Mary, Marry and Merry all differently.
I guess that's why it's bad to type in Antimoon while performing customer service on the phone :)
in NYC
ON, VOLUME and RESOLVE have /A/
but CAUGHT and THOUGHT have /o/
>>They all have /A/ fAther vowel in my accent and in the
Cambridge Advanced learner's dictionary:<<
I must say that I strongly disagree with the choice by the Cambridge Advanced Learners' Dictionary to have cot-caught-merged pronunciations for their "American" pronunciations. The matter is simply that a (slight) majority of English-speaking North American are cot-caught-unmerged, and cot-caught-merged pronunciations can be easily derived from cot-caught-unmerged pronunciations but not vice versa. As a result, it makes no sense at all to specify cot-caught-merged pronunciations as being "American" ones in a dictionary.
As for these particular words, General American proper has /A/ in "on" and "volume" but /Q/ (c.f. historical /O:/) in "caught", "thought", and "resolve", for the record.
I reside in the Southeast US, but I have moved around to different parts of the country (and abroad) all my life. I have a neutral (broadcast) American accent (lit. "no accent" as defined here)
I pronounce the 'o' in ON very open [Q:] and forward
and the o-sound in CAUGHT and THOUGHT a little less open--midway between Q: and A: and a little shorter
in VOLUME it's like in ON, but modified by the 'L' to sit further back
in RESOLVE it's like in CAUGHT/THOUGHT also modified by 'L' and further back
...cont.
for BOOK, I have heard it pronounced as BUUK (double or lengthened pronunciation of short /U/) by British speakers.
An example that comes to mind is the Actor in The Mummy, where she says "No harm ever came from reading a /BUUK/"
<<Just where do you live, exactly? Are you in some part of the UK where the foot-strut split exists but differs from that normally found in most southern English English and North American ENglish dialects? >>
For the record (what with it *not* being the UK), these *are* distinguished in northern English, good being /U/ and book /u:/
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