Phoneme /ɑː/ in General American

In General American IPA phonetic symbol /ɑː/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "start", "art", "palm", "spa", "lot" and "stop".

In Received Pronunciation, the IPA phoneme /ɑː/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "start", "art", "bath", "ask", "palm" and "spa".

In most of North America the father-bother merger is in effect. This means that IPA phoneme /ɒ/ sounds exactly like /ɑː/. This is the reason why "lot" and "stop" are mentioned in the first paragraph. Since many of the words with the phoneme /ɑː/ are spelled with the letter ‘o’, this phoneme is sometimes informally called “short o”. Moreover in Teflpedia (and also in dictionary.com) /ɒ/ means

Many people pronounce /ɑː/ and /ɑːr/ with different vowels (e.g. lodge as [lɑdʒ] and large as [lɑːrdʒ]); however since the difference is predictable there is no problem using the same symbol in both cases (e.g. /lɑːdʒ/ and /lɑːrdʒ/).

Common words
Some common words which practice the pronunciation of /ɑː/ include the following:
 * with "a": calm, father, wasp, watch
 * with "ar":
 * /ɒ/ or /ɔː/: wallet - want - wash
 * /ɒ/ or /ʌ/: what


 * with "o": body - bother - clock - cost - doctor - follow - got - holiday - hot - involve - job - lot - model - not - possible - probably - problem - shop - stop - top

Spelling anomalies

 * heart /hɑːrt/
 * knowledge /ˈnɒlɪdʒ/

Less common words

 * with "a": iguana - llama - palm - piñata - wad - wander
 * with "o": Congo, connoisseur /ˌkɒnəˈsɜːr/, Honduras, Morocco
 * with "e": entrepreneur /ˌɒntrəprəˈnɜːr/


 * homophones: bomb - balm; knot - not;

/ɑː/ or /ɔː/
All these words have an /ɒ/ sound in Received Pronunciation. In North America they may sound /ɑː/ or /ɔː/.
 * Boston - chocolate - gone - on - wash

/ɑːr/ or /ɔːr/
Main article: Decoding exercises: "orV" and "orrV"
 * General American /ɑːr/: borrow - sorrow - sorry - tomorrow
 * General American /ɔːr/: Florida - foreign - orange

Cot - caught merger
Main article: Cot-caught merger

In many parts of North America (about half the United States and nearly 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/ and the pronunciation is normally [oɚ] or [o], north is [noɚrθ] or [norθ] and glori is [gloriː].

Spanish
In Latin America American English is taught (the United Kingdom is far away). Spanish speakers tend to pronounce /ɑː/ according to the spelling. They will pronounce "palm" as [pam] and "lot" as.