IPA phoneme /ɒ/

In Received Pronunciation, the IPA phonetic symbol /ɒ/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "lot", "stop", "cloth", "long", "sorry" and "forest".

In General American "lot", "stop" and "sorry" are normally pronounced with /ɑː/; "cloth", "long" and "forest" are pronounced with Phoneme /ɔː/ in General American.

There are dictionaries of American English (such as Random House Dictionary) that actually use as it is explained in this article: for "lot" and "stop", but not for "cloth" and "long" /lɒt, stɒp, klɔːθ, lɔːŋ/, and their actual meaning is /lɑːt, stɑːp, klɔːθ, lɔːŋ/. "Sorry" and "forest" are normally pronounced /sɑːriː/ and /fɔːrɪst/. Random House Dictionary represents them as /ˈsɒri, ˈsɔri/ and /ˈfɔrɪst, ˈfɒrɪst/, with the preferred pronunciations swapped.

The remainder of this article is valid both for Received Pronunciation and General American (i.e. "lot" and "stop" are documented, "cloth" and "long", are not). See Phoneme in Received Pronunciation and Phoneme  in General American for more examples. The cases of "sorry" and "forest" are also explained in this article.

In Teflpedia if the symbol /ɒ/ is used and no equivalence to General American is given, it must be understood to be read as



Common words
Some common words which practice the pronunciation of /ɒ/ include the following:
 * with "o": body - box - follow - got - hot - involve - job - lot - model - obvious - policy - possible - probably - problem - product - shop - stop - top
 * with "a": quality - restaurant - wad - wander - want - wash - watch

Spelling
/ɒ/ is always followed by one or more consonants. In derived words a single consonant is usually doubled (hop, hopping; rot, rotten).

Spelling anomaly

 * knowledge /ˈnɒlɪdʒ/

Homophones

 * knot - not

/ɒr/
See Decoding exercises: "orV" and "orrV"

According to Wikipedia only 5 words are pronounced /ɑːr/ in General American and /ɒr/ in Received Pronunciation.
 * with "o": borrow - morrow (shortening of "tomorrow") - sorrow - sorry - tomorrow

In all other cases /ɒr/ is /ɔːr/. However these words are pronounced /ɑːr/ in regional American English (parts of the East Coast, including New York City, Long Island, northern New Jersey, Philadelphia, Rhode Island, and the Carolinas).
 * with "o": foreign, forest, horror, orange
 * with "a": warrant, warranty
 * with "au": laurel