The vowel // (caret)
This vowel is more central and slightly higher than the one in park, while it is
pronounced a bit further back in American English. According to Gimson, this is also
the quality of more refined RP forms. It does not really present much of a problem: it is
similar to Spanish a, although more central, but it is clearly different from the backish
/:/ sound in park and the frontish /æ/, which is tinged with an e-quality.
From the point of view of spelling, this also a simple sound. Gimson gives these
figures 91% it is spelled -u-, -o- 7% and -ou- 2% (enough, double, country, couple,
cousin, touch, trouble, rough, tough, young, etc.). A couple of exceptional words to
remember are flood and blood, as well as does
There are then two problems, a minor one and a more important one:
a) words spelled -u- where we find ‘lax u’ (butcher, bush, bullet)
b) words spelled -o- where we find caret, rather than short o (Monday, London.) We
will concentrate on these first.
The majority of those words where -o- corresponds to caret are cases where
there is a nasal in the phonetic environment. A few of them are in contact with -v. In
order to become aware of this factor, let's work on the following exercise.
Exercise:
Sometimes spelling -o- corresponds not to an ‘o’ sound, but to //. This is typically so when in
contact with a nasal or a labiodental. Indicate whether the vowel -o- in the following words is
pronounced with a caret sound or with an ‘o’ sound:
across
mother
come
jog
drop
nothing
cottage
wonder
harmonic
son
cover
wrong
context
toxic
gone
above
snob
confront
London
wander
monkey
once
convict
long
honey
follow
monk
front
ecology
modest
stop
honor
tongue
none
south
strong
bottle
doll
glove
concrete
frontier
month
topic
hot
other
comfort
southern
dog
dove
resolve
object
one
some
lot
dozen
symbolic
among
honey
cough
ton
done
love
dolphin
money
novel
stomach
onion
color
bother
brother
done
cost