What is the difference between /ɔː/ and /ɒ/ ?

[duiter]

Hi,

What is the difference between /ɔː/ and /ɒ/ ?

Many thanks

[Gatsby1412]

ɔ: is the vowel used in the English words "all," "fall," "walk," "autumn," etc. It is always given length, and is perhaps used more commonly in other languages, for example, Russian. To pronounce it, you must round your lips.
ɒ is the vowel used in the English words "honest," "hot," "knot," "lot," etc. It is always short.

Some lazy Americans will pronounce ɒ where ɔ: ought to be pronounced, so it would be beneficial to listen to the British when trying to decipher these sounds.

[thatone]

This is /ɒ/ with and this is /ɔ/. Listen to the audio recordings to hear the difference.

/ɒ/ is like /ɑ/, but more rounded. In American English it can be found in words like law, caught, dog (in non cot-caught merged accents, in the form /:ɒ/). In British English it can be found in words like dog, not, lot as /ɒ/.

/ɔ/ is a more "closed" vowel, something between /ɒ/ and /o/. In British English it can be found in words like law, caught, and in some dialects can sound more like /o/. In American English can be found only before r, as in before /bəfɔ:r/.

[birdeen's call]

Some lazy Americans will pronounce ɒ where ɔ: ought to be pronounced, so it would be beneficial to listen to the British when trying to decipher these sounds.

Phonological history of English low back vowels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Some lazy Americans" seem to make up 40% of the whole number of speakers.

[thatone]

Phonological history of English low back vowels - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

"Some lazy Americans" seem to make up 40% of the whole number of speakers.

And anyway, according to Labov in a 2006 NPR Interview:

Mr. LABOV: Half of this country has a merger of the word classes, cot, caught, don, dawn, hock, hawk.

Labov's data was based on a 1996 survey, and considering that mergers spread, it's not unlikely that it grew by 10%.

BTW, looks like Gatsby1412 is confusing /ɒ/ with /ɑ/.

[birdeen's call]

It's a very interesting interview, thank you.

[BeaSirpa]

/ɒ/ differs from the long /ɔː/ in tenseness, in the character of the contact between the following consonant (ʃɒp-̥̥̥̥̥̥ɪŋ ʃɔː-tə), and relatively in duration- /ɔː/ is lengthened considerably before a lenis consonant, while before a fortis consonant its duration equals to the length of /ɒ/ before a lenis consonant. (Lenhardt, 1981: 50)

The /ɔː/´s tongue position is not quite so low as for the /ɒ/. The lips are rounded so as to leave an opening which is much smaller than in the case of the short /ɒ/. (Jones, 1969: 79)

[5jj]

Some lazy Americans will pronounce ɒ where ɔ: ought to be pronounced, so it would be beneficial to listen to the British when trying to decipher these sounds.

It seems strange to me for you to say that what appears to be an acceptable American pronunciation is 'lazy'. That's the sort of comment I used to hear from the masters at my oh-so-British would-be public school fifty years ago.