The phonetic symbol and sound ɒ

Today we’re looking at the symbol / ɒ /.

Here it is in more detail:

ɒ

It’s a short sound, and we see it in words such as:

hot  / hɒt /

not / nɒt /

got / gɒt /

Scotland / skɒtlənd /

There are many words in English where the alphabet letter ‘o’ is pronounced as / ɒ / - so where’s the problem?

Well, take a look at these two words:

was / wɒz /

what / wɒt /

Now, the letter ‘a’ is pronounced as / ɒ / too!

And what about the words where the alphabet letter ‘o’ is not pronounced as an / ɒ /, such as ‘station’, ‘word’, ‘today’…

Are you confused? Don’t be! This is where phonetics can really help. The truth is, you cannot rely on English spelling to know how to pronounce a word, but if you can write it in phonetics, the pronunciation of a word is then clear. So when we see the phonetic symbols:

 / wɒz / (was) and

/ wɒt / (what)

we see immediately how the word is pronounced.

Notice that the word 'Scotland' is not capitalised in phonetics: / skɒtlənd /. This is because each distinct phonetic symbol represents one sound only, so if you change the symbol, you change the sound (or make it non-existent). As a quick example, when we write the name Robert in phonetics, it looks like this:

/ 'rɒbət /

But if we write it as:

/ 'Rɒbət /

then the / R / is in fact the symbol for another sound used in some French dialects, and thus does not sound like the English / r / anymore.

Next time, we’ll start to look at diphthongs. You may well ask, “What are those?”. Not exactly a word you come across every day of the week! Well, join me in my next blog to find out more.