Phoneme /ɔː/ in General American (international version)

In General American the IPA phonetic symbol /ɔː/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "north", "force", "thought", and also "cloth" (the latter is pronounced /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation).

In Received Pronunciation, this phoneme is heard in "north", "force", and "thought". Additionally, many people pronounce "sure" as /ʃɔːr/ instead of the more traditional /ʃʊər/. See IPA phoneme /ʊə/.

In Received Pronunciation /ɔːr/ is pronounced [ɔː] unless it is followed by a vowel, i.e. when the spelling has an "r", it is normally silent unless it is followed by a vowel.

In General American the "r" in /ɔːr/ is always pronounced. Many people pronounce /ɔː/ and /ɔːr/ with different vowels (e.g. sauce as [sɔs] and source as [sors]); however since the difference is predictable there is no problem using the same symbol in both cases (e.g. /sɔːs/ and /sɔːrs/).

There are places in the United Kingdom where /ɔːr/ is pronounced [ɔːr], and places in North America where /r/ is silent.



Common words
Some common words containing /ɔː/ include the following:


 * with "oa": abroad - broad
 * with "ough": ought - thought
 * past tense and past participle: bought - brought - fought - sought - thought


 * with "a": water
 * with "al": almost - already - alter - always - chalk - false - salt - talk - walk
 * with "all": ball - call - fall - hall - mall - small - talk - walk - wall
 * with "aw": dawn - flaw - hawk - jaw - law - lawn - raw - saw - shawl - thaw - yawn
 * with "au": auction - August - Aussie - austerity - Australia - Austria - author - autumn - cause - clause - daughter - fault - launch
 * past tense and past participle: caught - taught


 * with "ou": cough

Words marked are pronounced with /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation.

/ɔːr/
Some common words containing /ɔːr/ include the following (note that the /r/ is silent in Received Pronunciation, unless it is followed by a vowel)
 * with "or": afford - born - cork - door - floor - fork - horse - lord - more - nor - or - pork - score - short - store - storm - sword
 * with "oar": boar - board - oar - roar - soar
 * with "our": court - four - pour
 * with "ar": quarter - war - warm - warn


 * homophones: bored/board - or/oar/ore.

/ɔː/, /ɑː/ or /ɒ/
Note that /ɒ/ and /ɑː/ sound identically in most of North America. All these words have an /ɒ/ sound in Received Pronunciation.
 * alcohol - Boston - chocolate - gone - on - wash

/ɔːr/, /ɑːr/ or /ɒr/

 * borrow - Florida - orange - sorrow - sorry - tomorrow - warrant - warranty

Cot-caught merger
Main article: Cot-caught merger

In many parts of North America (about half the United States and all of Canada) /ɑː/ and /ɔː/ sound the same. This is in addition to the father - bother merger, where /ɑː/ and /ɒ/ sound the same. This means that caught /ɔː/, cot /ɒ/, father /ɑː/ and bother /ɒ/ have all the same stressed vowel /ɑː/. In this accent /ɔː/ appears only followed by /r/: north, force.

The cot-caught merger generates very few homophones.
 * Homophones
 * bot (computer program; shortening of robot) - bought; collar - caller; cot - caught; don (put clothes on)/Don (nickname of Donald) - dawn/Dawn; stock - stalk;

Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1
Preconceived ideas and other interferences from L1 obviously interfere in many cases with how students perceive - and pronounce - sounds/words in English. The following sections aims to point out some of the most typical difficulties teachers and students may encounter regarding pronunciation.

Spanish
Many Spanish speakers will pronounce the short o sound as /ɔː/ even when it should be pronounced /ɑː/: lot as.

It is not uncommon to hear them pronouncing or.