Listen to sound files for General American English vowels
Click this link to open a new window that will play a sound file demonstrating the following vowels and diphthongs of General American English. (See also Contemporary Linguistics (CL) Ch 2, Table 2.15 on p 38.)
| [ i ] | beet |
| [ ɪ ] | bit |
| [ ej ] | bait |
| [ ɛ ] | bet |
| [ æ ] | bat |
| [ ɑ ] | hot |
| [ ɔ ] | bought |
| [ ow ] | boat |
| [ ʊ ] | good |
| [ u ] | boot |
| [ ʌ ] | but |
| [ aj ] | bite |
| [ aw ] | bout |
| [ ɔj ] | void |
| [ ju ] | cute (this category not included in CL) |
- The sound file is from the web site for the textbook A Course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged.
About the vowel [ ɔ ]
In some dialects of American English, this vowel category does not occur.
- If you have a different vowel in hot (lock)
than you have in bought (ought), this means that the vowel that you have in
bought/ought is [ ɔ ],
while the vowel you have in hot/lock
is [ ɑ ].
- If you have the same vowel in hot (lock)
and bought (ought), then the vowel you have
is [ ɑ ].
(...Unless you are from the New England coastal area,
in which case hot and bought may both have
the typical bought/ought vowel,
[ ɔ ] — you can
hear this from the Car Talk guys.)
- When in doubt, remember that [ ɔ ] is a round vowel, and [ ɑ ] is an unrounded vowel. Do you see rounding in your vowel in the words hot or ought?
More audio examples for vowels
To listen to even more examples of General American English vowels produced in various syllable contexts, see this chart (Table 4.2) from the web site for A Course in Phonetics.