Finally a teacher of American English that has the merger (and is aware of it!). I've tried to find more info about this for ages, but from experience - a lot of native speakers don't quite understand this phenomenon and many can't really hear any difference between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ since the merged vowel is neither - it's more like a combination of the two. I have a couple of questions pertaining to this and it would mean the world to me if you could answer them. *1)* when you pronounce the word "law," does it rhyme with "la" (like the musical note)? *2)* in words like "all," "fall," "tall," etc. I can often detect some lip rounding (even for speakers with the cot/caught merger) due to the L affecting the vowel quality -- would you pronounce these words with the lips relaxed or slightly rounded? *3)* You say that pronouncing "aw" as /ɔ/ in isolation sounds British to your ears at 1:47, but how do you perceive the sound when it's spoken by an actual American? Btw your channel has a lot of great content, I subscribed 👍
Thanks for subscribing and for the compliments! 1) Yes 2) That's a very subtle thing and a good question. I'd say some very minor lip rounding is possible, but definitely not required and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem that I do any rounding at all. This is something I've never paid attention to, so perhaps after paying more attention to it for a while, I'll notice more rounding. 3) That's also a fantastic question. So... up until a few months ago, I didn't notice any difference at all. My grandma is from New York (but doesn't have too much of a "New Yorker" accent that you might expect). She DOESN'T have the merger, but for my entire life, I never noticed that she was producing two different sounds. Note that both my parents DO have the merger, as well as many of the people in this part of the country (I'm from San Diego). In fact, up until a couple years ago, I didn't even know that this whole merged/unmerged thing existed and only ever heard Americans produce the one sound: /ɑ/ However, I've realized something interesting and peculiar. Presumably from influence from my grandma, I've started noticing that I do, indeed, have the merger, BUT I sometimes use the /ɔ/ sound (or something similar to it) randomly in words that would contain either sound from the merger. I mean, it's not that I only sometimes use it where other speakers who don't have the merger would, but even in words where it's supposed to be the /ɑ/ sound, I'll occasionally use the /ɔ/. I only started to notice this because of listening to myself for many hours during video editing. So I definitely have the merger, but I have some weird influence from my grandma that causes me to occasionally use the /ɔ/ sound randomly. But that's fine. Either way, it's still easier and simpler for English learners to just learn the merged version. Even if I didn't have the merger, I'd still teach it that way. Now I can definitely hear a difference between these two sounds and hearing Americans produce the /ɔ/ sound is something very strange to me that I'm still getting used to. Although I'll add that listening to British speakers, the /ɔ/ sound seems a lot stronger to me than the American version. I don't know much about the technical details of British English vowels, so maybe I'm confusing something there.
@@NativeEnglishHacks First of all, *THANK YOU* so much for taking the time to reply to my questions in such great detail. I especially appreciate all the anecdotes of how you personally became acquainted with the merger -- that was a fun and fascinating read! One reason why I love your approach so much is that you really pay attention to the actual phonetics properties of modern American vowel sounds. I don't know what it is, but some people that teach English rely too much on academically approved information and end up teaching old fashioned form of the American accent that might have been correct 30 years ago, but that's no longer common now. For example -- I've noticed you think of the "OY" diphthong as /oɪ/ rather than /ɔɪ/ (as it's often conventionally transcribed in textbooks). You've even marked it as /oɪ/ in the vowel chart on your website. Your transcription makes a lot more sense to me. About the random substitution of /ɔ/ for /ɑ/ and vice versa, you've just confirmed something I've long suspected but wasn't entirely sure about. I don't necessarily think it is specifically your grandma's influence that makes you do this because I've noticed other people from Western U.S. and Canada do this. There's even another teacher on TH-cam who does it. She'd teach the /ɑ/ vowel merged like you do, but then she'd say words like "got" or "top" as /gɔt/ and /tɔp/ with slight lip rounding. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that - for you guys - both /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are allophones of the same phoneme (the short 'O') and since, in your mind, they're one and the same you kind of go back and forth. One thing is still consistent though and that is that the vowel remains a low back one. Some people without the merger often pronounce their "AH" brighter -- it may sound like the A in "cat" or when someone does a Boston accent - PAAAHK YA CAAAAH (park your car). People with the merger would never do that. As for British vowels, once again, conventional transcription is at fault here. It doesn't reflect modern Received Pronunciation well. What is transcribed as /ɔ/ (e.g. law, tall, haul) is actually a very rounded monophthongal /o:/ and what is transcribed as /ɒ/ (e.g. hot, top, lot) is the /ɔ/ sound. That's why the American /ɔ/ and the British one sound nothing alike because they are different vowels. Anyway, keep up the *GREAT* work, and thanks again for the insight! 😊 Looking forward to your next videos!
@@laracroftvideos My pleasure! I naturally try to explain things as accurately as I can, which is often a problem in conversation but (usually) good for teaching ☺ As for the transcriptions I use, I'm just basing things off of how I talk and what makes sense to me (as well as what's easier for the learner when appropriate). I love languages, but I'm definitely not a fan of all the technical jargon and academic strictness, which is fine itself, but often divorced from the reality of most language learners. In fact, I was studying for a BA in linguistics and dropped out after a class about mapping sentences with a tree structure. A lot of that kind of stuff, though potentially useful, is just too much for my taste and not particularly useful for actual language learning or teaching in my opinion.
I’d like to thank you guys for all the work and research here. It’s confused me for like almost a decade every time I heard ppl pronounce “pop” and “talk” with the same a: sound. However, cuz they have different alphabets and phonetic symbol, I couldn’t be sure of which sound is correct and it’s caused so many troubles for learning. U guys are life saviours. Love from China.
Hi. May I ask you to make an extended video of AW sound with: father, water, swamp, watch, block, hot, job, lock, not, shop, dog. I would like to learn more about the "cot"/"caught" (ɑ/ɔ) merger.
Hmmmm... Well, this is what I'll do: first, as I said, I do plan to make videos of just example words for each sound, which I recently started making; it will take a little while to get to the "aw" sound, but maybe I can just do that one sooner in order to help you. I'll make sure to include all of the example words that you've listed here. Second, about the cot/caught merger: there's not much more to know, I don't think, but I suppose I could do a video talking specifically about the merger itself and going into more detail about which dialects use it and which don't. I don't know when I'll be able to make that video, but it's a possibility for the future. Either way, just know that if you want to speak like me and/or simply have to learn one less vowel sound, most words that were/are pronounced with /ɔ/ in some other dialects change to /ɑ/, and words that already used the /ɑ/ sound still use it. Some words shifted differently, like "lawyer" moved to the diphthong "oi" (sounds like "loiyer") and "foreign" moved to the R-colored "O" (sounds like "forin"), for example. Put simply, you can forget about /ɔ/ completely. That's the important point here. I hope that helps. Stay tuned for the AW sound example words video :)
Hi. Thank you! I am learning to speak English with your videos. Please make a video with the ah sound like in father. I suppose that is not the same like cat or saw.
Actually, it's the exact same sound as in the word "saw". In many dialects of English, the "a" in "father" is the /ɑ/ sound and the "a" in "saw" is the /ɔ/ sound, but not in all dialects (such as mine). There are many speakers who have the "cot"/"caught" (ɑ/ɔ) merger, and most of the words that were pronounced differently became the one sound: /ɑ/. So I pronounce "father" and "saw" exactly the same! I teach you this way because it's a lot easier and simpler. Instead of learning two vowel sounds, just learn one :) Of course, since the letter "a" by itself is usually the 4th vowel sound /æ/, as in "cat", the word "father" is an exception and is instead pronounced with the 5th vowel sound /ɑ/, as in "saw"
English Hacks - Learn English Better Thank you! Just now I’m interested in learning from one source. So I’m going to do what you said about “a” in saw.
@@NativeEnglishHacks I forgot to ask you about your dialect. Which US State are you? I'm going to use that as a reference to look for podcasts in your region.
I'm from San Diego, California. I generally speak Western American English, which covers the western US from north to south (Arizona to Washington), as well as many Canadian speakers, with very few and minor differences
Thanks for the video, a question: I've been told multiple times that ɔ is the same in American English and Portuguese, and that in a lot of American English accents ɑ is pretty close if not the same that the Portuguese or Spanish ä (obviously in the unmerged version). If this is true would it be too distracting to speak without the merge using the Portuguese version of those phonemes? I'm asking because to me that would actually be easier than learning another vowel in the middle of the two. Wikipedia seems to believe that claim but I'm doubtful of it actually being the same and not just people hearing the closest thing available in their accent.
Absolute nonsense. Even if they were the same, the different mouth postures color them, which only really matters if you're trying to remove your accent as much as possible, but still. Posture is king
@@NativeEnglishHacks That was quick, thanks. Figures, I was doubtful of it from the get go but had enough "experienced English teachers/speakers" tell me that it was true that decided to see if there was anything to it since it would be easier for me, but alas, no way something something so convenient is true without someone trying to cut corners.
If I remember right, the Russian "A" sound is farther forward in the mouth. Make sure the back of your tongue is down far enough and not just the middle part. It's a small change that makes all the difference. If you haven't already, search for the Russian vowel chart on Wikipedia. That one looks a little more confusing because it seems you have moving vowels or something, but you can compare the position of the vowels with my chart. That should help
@@NativeEnglishHacks yea, our "A" sound is only in forward part of the mouth. That is the reason why it's so hard to pronounce. But your explanation is awesome as always👍
Wondering about the word "lawyer" in Western American accent. I feel like with the cot/caught merger I'm afraid to mess it up and sound like a British (not necessarily RP) person saying "liar". Would those two sounds similar to you, e.g. a Californian's "lawyer" vs a Briton's "liar"?
Not at all! I believe I talked about this issue (and this word in particular) in the lesson for the OI diphthong. Both the British and American "liar" use the AI diphthong. In British English and Non-Western General American English, the OI diphthong uses ɔ, but in Western American, this shifts to the O sound position (the same happens with OR). In other words, the Western American "lawyer" doesn't use the merged or unmerged AW sound, but the O sound as the start of the diphthong (which is part of why I call it the OI diphthong) ☺
@@NativeEnglishHacks Awesome! Thank you for explaining! So, would be it fair to say that in Western American accents the o sound only exists at the beginning of diphthongs and when coloring r? Are there any other cases?
Well, there's the O sound itself. This can be a diphthong combination like in Non-Western General American where the end point is the sound in "book". But then there's the California O, which is a monophthong, easier to do, and still sounds completely natural. So there's the O itself (as a monophthong or diphthong), OI, and OR. That's it!
@@NativeEnglishHacks Fascinating! This is the first time I'm hearing about the California monophthong o. Do you have any videos discussing monophthong vs diphthong o? Would be very interesting to hear some minimal pairing between the two. Any place I can read about it?
It doesn't fit to 'aw' sound, but how about the word 'long'? In your dialect, if you don't have this 'open o' sound, do you also pronounce this word like 'lang' ?
With the cot/caught merger, everything that was /ɑ/ or /ɔ/ becomes just /ɑ/, but farther back in the mouth. The only exceptions are "or" and "oi", which move up to O as the starting position instead of /ɔ/. So, the word "long" IS pronounced with /ɑ/ (what I call AW) if you use the merger. The interesting thing that I recently found out, though, is that the cot/caught merger is becoming the normal way that most Americans speak because it's been moving eastward and now many (or maybe most) people under 40 in the Midwest (the supposed "neutral" accent area) also use the merger. ☺
Sounds a bit aggressive. You can check out my teacher profile on italki using the link in any recent video. Note that I don't teach beginners and I currently only offer pronunciation (using the mouth posture approach) or consultations
Thanks for the lessons. Wish you the best in your new job.
Finally a teacher of American English that has the merger (and is aware of it!). I've tried to find more info about this for ages, but from experience - a lot of native speakers don't quite understand this phenomenon and many can't really hear any difference between /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ since the merged vowel is neither - it's more like a combination of the two. I have a couple of questions pertaining to this and it would mean the world to me if you could answer them. *1)* when you pronounce the word "law," does it rhyme with "la" (like the musical note)? *2)* in words like "all," "fall," "tall," etc. I can often detect some lip rounding (even for speakers with the cot/caught merger) due to the L affecting the vowel quality -- would you pronounce these words with the lips relaxed or slightly rounded? *3)* You say that pronouncing "aw" as /ɔ/ in isolation sounds British to your ears at 1:47, but how do you perceive the sound when it's spoken by an actual American? Btw your channel has a lot of great content, I subscribed 👍
Thanks for subscribing and for the compliments!
1) Yes
2) That's a very subtle thing and a good question. I'd say some very minor lip rounding is possible, but definitely not required and, as far as I can tell, it doesn't seem that I do any rounding at all. This is something I've never paid attention to, so perhaps after paying more attention to it for a while, I'll notice more rounding.
3) That's also a fantastic question. So... up until a few months ago, I didn't notice any difference at all. My grandma is from New York (but doesn't have too much of a "New Yorker" accent that you might expect). She DOESN'T have the merger, but for my entire life, I never noticed that she was producing two different sounds. Note that both my parents DO have the merger, as well as many of the people in this part of the country (I'm from San Diego). In fact, up until a couple years ago, I didn't even know that this whole merged/unmerged thing existed and only ever heard Americans produce the one sound: /ɑ/
However, I've realized something interesting and peculiar. Presumably from influence from my grandma, I've started noticing that I do, indeed, have the merger, BUT I sometimes use the /ɔ/ sound (or something similar to it) randomly in words that would contain either sound from the merger. I mean, it's not that I only sometimes use it where other speakers who don't have the merger would, but even in words where it's supposed to be the /ɑ/ sound, I'll occasionally use the /ɔ/. I only started to notice this because of listening to myself for many hours during video editing. So I definitely have the merger, but I have some weird influence from my grandma that causes me to occasionally use the /ɔ/ sound randomly. But that's fine. Either way, it's still easier and simpler for English learners to just learn the merged version. Even if I didn't have the merger, I'd still teach it that way.
Now I can definitely hear a difference between these two sounds and hearing Americans produce the /ɔ/ sound is something very strange to me that I'm still getting used to. Although I'll add that listening to British speakers, the /ɔ/ sound seems a lot stronger to me than the American version. I don't know much about the technical details of British English vowels, so maybe I'm confusing something there.
@@NativeEnglishHacks First of all, *THANK YOU* so much for taking the time to reply to my questions in such great detail. I especially appreciate all the anecdotes of how you personally became acquainted with the merger -- that was a fun and fascinating read! One reason why I love your approach so much is that you really pay attention to the actual phonetics properties of modern American vowel sounds. I don't know what it is, but some people that teach English rely too much on academically approved information and end up teaching old fashioned form of the American accent that might have been correct 30 years ago, but that's no longer common now. For example -- I've noticed you think of the "OY" diphthong as /oɪ/ rather than /ɔɪ/ (as it's often conventionally transcribed in textbooks). You've even marked it as /oɪ/ in the vowel chart on your website. Your transcription makes a lot more sense to me.
About the random substitution of /ɔ/ for /ɑ/ and vice versa, you've just confirmed something I've long suspected but wasn't entirely sure about. I don't necessarily think it is specifically your grandma's influence that makes you do this because I've noticed other people from Western U.S. and Canada do this. There's even another teacher on TH-cam who does it. She'd teach the /ɑ/ vowel merged like you do, but then she'd say words like "got" or "top" as /gɔt/ and /tɔp/ with slight lip rounding. The only explanation I can come up with for this is that - for you guys - both /ɑ/ and /ɔ/ are allophones of the same phoneme (the short 'O') and since, in your mind, they're one and the same you kind of go back and forth. One thing is still consistent though and that is that the vowel remains a low back one. Some people without the merger often pronounce their "AH" brighter -- it may sound like the A in "cat" or when someone does a Boston accent - PAAAHK YA CAAAAH (park your car). People with the merger would never do that.
As for British vowels, once again, conventional transcription is at fault here. It doesn't reflect modern Received Pronunciation well. What is transcribed as /ɔ/ (e.g. law, tall, haul) is actually a very rounded monophthongal /o:/ and what is transcribed as /ɒ/ (e.g. hot, top, lot) is the /ɔ/ sound. That's why the American /ɔ/ and the British one sound nothing alike because they are different vowels.
Anyway, keep up the *GREAT* work, and thanks again for the insight! 😊 Looking forward to your next videos!
@@laracroftvideos My pleasure! I naturally try to explain things as accurately as I can, which is often a problem in conversation but (usually) good for teaching ☺
As for the transcriptions I use, I'm just basing things off of how I talk and what makes sense to me (as well as what's easier for the learner when appropriate). I love languages, but I'm definitely not a fan of all the technical jargon and academic strictness, which is fine itself, but often divorced from the reality of most language learners. In fact, I was studying for a BA in linguistics and dropped out after a class about mapping sentences with a tree structure. A lot of that kind of stuff, though potentially useful, is just too much for my taste and not particularly useful for actual language learning or teaching in my opinion.
I’d like to thank you guys for all the work and research here. It’s confused me for like almost a decade every time I heard ppl pronounce “pop” and “talk” with the same a: sound. However, cuz they have different alphabets and phonetic symbol, I couldn’t be sure of which sound is correct and it’s caused so many troubles for learning. U guys are life saviours. Love from China.
Love your vids man, thanks!!
I truly enjoyed this video. Great pronunciation analysis.
Thanks! ☺
Thank you now l'm gonna use only AW sound it's so simple.
Hi. May I ask you to make an extended video of AW sound with: father, water, swamp, watch, block, hot, job, lock, not, shop, dog. I would like to learn more about the "cot"/"caught" (ɑ/ɔ) merger.
Hmmmm... Well, this is what I'll do: first, as I said, I do plan to make videos of just example words for each sound, which I recently started making; it will take a little while to get to the "aw" sound, but maybe I can just do that one sooner in order to help you. I'll make sure to include all of the example words that you've listed here. Second, about the cot/caught merger: there's not much more to know, I don't think, but I suppose I could do a video talking specifically about the merger itself and going into more detail about which dialects use it and which don't. I don't know when I'll be able to make that video, but it's a possibility for the future. Either way, just know that if you want to speak like me and/or simply have to learn one less vowel sound, most words that were/are pronounced with /ɔ/ in some other dialects change to /ɑ/, and words that already used the /ɑ/ sound still use it. Some words shifted differently, like "lawyer" moved to the diphthong "oi" (sounds like "loiyer") and "foreign" moved to the R-colored "O" (sounds like "forin"), for example. Put simply, you can forget about /ɔ/ completely. That's the important point here. I hope that helps. Stay tuned for the AW sound example words video :)
Thank you. I’m going to practice more with this video.
Hi. Thank you! I am learning to speak English with your videos. Please make a video with the ah sound like in father. I suppose that is not the same like cat or saw.
Actually, it's the exact same sound as in the word "saw". In many dialects of English, the "a" in "father" is the /ɑ/ sound and the "a" in "saw" is the /ɔ/ sound, but not in all dialects (such as mine). There are many speakers who have the "cot"/"caught" (ɑ/ɔ) merger, and most of the words that were pronounced differently became the one sound: /ɑ/. So I pronounce "father" and "saw" exactly the same! I teach you this way because it's a lot easier and simpler. Instead of learning two vowel sounds, just learn one :)
Of course, since the letter "a" by itself is usually the 4th vowel sound /æ/, as in "cat", the word "father" is an exception and is instead pronounced with the 5th vowel sound /ɑ/, as in "saw"
English Hacks - Learn English Better Thank you! Just now I’m interested in learning from one source. So I’m going to do what you said about “a” in saw.
@@NativeEnglishHacks I forgot to ask you about your dialect. Which US State are you? I'm going to use that as a reference to look for podcasts in your region.
I'm from San Diego, California. I generally speak Western American English, which covers the western US from north to south (Arizona to Washington), as well as many Canadian speakers, with very few and minor differences
Thanks for the video, a question:
I've been told multiple times that ɔ is the same in American English and Portuguese, and that in a lot of American English accents ɑ is pretty close if not the same that the Portuguese or Spanish ä (obviously in the unmerged version).
If this is true would it be too distracting to speak without the merge using the Portuguese version of those phonemes? I'm asking because to me that would actually be easier than learning another vowel in the middle of the two.
Wikipedia seems to believe that claim but I'm doubtful of it actually being the same and not just people hearing the closest thing available in their accent.
Absolute nonsense. Even if they were the same, the different mouth postures color them, which only really matters if you're trying to remove your accent as much as possible, but still. Posture is king
@@NativeEnglishHacks That was quick, thanks.
Figures, I was doubtful of it from the get go but had enough "experienced English teachers/speakers" tell me that it was true that decided to see if there was anything to it since it would be easier for me, but alas, no way something something so convenient is true without someone trying to cut corners.
You explained about the two types of L, do native speakers distinguish between them?
Does the Caught cot merger affect the AR and OR diphthongs?
th-cam.com/video/QOnBy4iWqQo/w-d-xo.html
@@NativeEnglishHacks thanks
I'm having hard time making this sound. Can you provide more information on how to make this sound? Thank you!
Will do. I'll try to make a short video response later today ☺
Thank you .you are Aw-some!
Haha, nice one!
th-cam.com/video/pQB3odzpKhA/w-d-xo.html
correct me , as I understand i should keep the tongue down and than shift it back , isn't it ?
Probably not. I'll be making a video about mouth placement soon that will help answer questions like this
@@NativeEnglishHacks I appreciate your great works , your method is fantastic )))
so hard to pronounsing for russian english learners o_o but we have to work for it :)
If I remember right, the Russian "A" sound is farther forward in the mouth. Make sure the back of your tongue is down far enough and not just the middle part. It's a small change that makes all the difference.
If you haven't already, search for the Russian vowel chart on Wikipedia. That one looks a little more confusing because it seems you have moving vowels or something, but you can compare the position of the vowels with my chart. That should help
@@NativeEnglishHacks yea, our "A" sound is only in forward part of the mouth. That is the reason why it's so hard to pronounce. But your explanation is awesome as always👍
Wondering about the word "lawyer" in Western American accent. I feel like with the cot/caught merger I'm afraid to mess it up and sound like a British (not necessarily RP) person saying "liar". Would those two sounds similar to you, e.g. a Californian's "lawyer" vs a Briton's "liar"?
Not at all! I believe I talked about this issue (and this word in particular) in the lesson for the OI diphthong. Both the British and American "liar" use the AI diphthong. In British English and Non-Western General American English, the OI diphthong uses ɔ, but in Western American, this shifts to the O sound position (the same happens with OR). In other words, the Western American "lawyer" doesn't use the merged or unmerged AW sound, but the O sound as the start of the diphthong (which is part of why I call it the OI diphthong) ☺
@@NativeEnglishHacks Awesome! Thank you for explaining! So, would be it fair to say that in Western American accents the o sound only exists at the beginning of diphthongs and when coloring r? Are there any other cases?
Well, there's the O sound itself. This can be a diphthong combination like in Non-Western General American where the end point is the sound in "book". But then there's the California O, which is a monophthong, easier to do, and still sounds completely natural. So there's the O itself (as a monophthong or diphthong), OI, and OR. That's it!
@@NativeEnglishHacks Fascinating! This is the first time I'm hearing about the California monophthong o. Do you have any videos discussing monophthong vs diphthong o? Would be very interesting to hear some minimal pairing between the two. Any place I can read about it?
I talk about it in the main lesson for the O sound. You can find all these lessons in the Pronunciation and Ear Training course here on TH-cam ☺
It doesn't fit to 'aw' sound, but how about the word 'long'? In your dialect, if you don't have this 'open o' sound, do you also pronounce this word like 'lang' ?
With the cot/caught merger, everything that was /ɑ/ or /ɔ/ becomes just /ɑ/, but farther back in the mouth. The only exceptions are "or" and "oi", which move up to O as the starting position instead of /ɔ/.
So, the word "long" IS pronounced with /ɑ/ (what I call AW) if you use the merger. The interesting thing that I recently found out, though, is that the cot/caught merger is becoming the normal way that most Americans speak because it's been moving eastward and now many (or maybe most) people under 40 in the Midwest (the supposed "neutral" accent area) also use the merger. ☺
@@NativeEnglishHacks thank you!!
This sound doesn't resonate in the chest at all for me.
You should feel some sort of vibration as far down as the stomach, so something might be off.
My name is Abdul , i want be your student. and i want your answer.
Sounds a bit aggressive.
You can check out my teacher profile on italki using the link in any recent video. Note that I don't teach beginners and I currently only offer pronunciation (using the mouth posture approach) or consultations