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. These examples are similar to those in CL Ch 2, Table 2.17 on p 44. (The sound file is from the UCLA web site for the textbook A Course in Phonetics by Peter Ladefoged.)
- Your browser will need to allow QuickTime for the above sound file to work; if you have problems, you can access the same example words on this web page instead (but note minor differences in how diphthongs are transcribed).
| [ 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) |
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 probably
[ ɔ ],
while the vowel you have in hot/lock is probably
[ ɑ ].
- If you have the same vowel in hot (lock) and bought (ought), then the vowel you have is probably [ 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.)
More audio examples for vowels (optional)
Here are some additional vowel resources from the new A Course in Phonetics website (Ladefoged & Johnson, 2015). Note that the phonetic symbols used for the diphthongs at these links are a little different from those used in CL.
-
More examples of vowels, on clickable vowel charts.
- To listen to even more examples of General American English vowels produced in various syllable contexts, see this clickable word list.