[YG Conlang Archives] > [ceqli group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
> > I think it would be much better for Anglophones to think
> > of vowel 'o' as equivalent to English 'aw' rather than
> > 'oh', because it shouldn't be diphthongized under any
> > circumstance ('o' shouldn't sound the same as 'ow').
>
> I've heard this before, and never quite gotten it. Is this
> advice for people in the British Isles? It sure doesn't
> help an American like myself.
>
> When I see 'aw', I think of words like claw, and "aw,
> shucks". These are pronounced as /a/, not /o/. Instead,
> for /o/ I think of boat, hoe, row/roe, toe, crow, oh,
> dough, rose, pose, no, etc.
>
> Can you explain the logic behind this 'aw' advice so I
> can make it stop disturbing me?
Well, simply I had no idea some Americans pronounced
"claw" as [kla]!! This is the first time I hear of such
pronounciation. I must confess I've never heard any
English speaker pronounce "aw" as /a/ so far. I've
always heard 'aw' pronounced as [O:] or some other way
pretty similar to that.
If you really pronounce 'aw' as [a], then I'm sorry to
tell you that probably you have no easy way to see how /o/
is to be pronounced properly (unless you listen e.g. to
Spanish, Italian or Japanese and try to imitate what you
hear), because it certainly IS NOT the sound of English
"oh", which is a clear diphthong [@U] or [oU].
Best regards,
Javier