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→Short vowels: Unnecessary aside, readers don't need to know how commonly used it is in other languages. In any case, the phonetic realization of the LOT vowel will not necessarily be [ɒ] even in accents that don't merge it with another vowel; many/most will have it closer to [ɔ], a rather more common vowel. Such discussion of phonetic qualities is beyond the level of this guide, so the aside was pointless. |
→Short vowels: Replacing irrelevant bit about variation in vowel qualities of STRUT (which can be said of every single English phoneme) with potentially relevant note to those who are confused as to why "cut" needs a different symbol from "put". |
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English short vowels are all transcribed by a single letter in the IPA.
Because English short vowels ''a e i o u'' are closer to the Classical pronunciation (still found in Spanish and Italian) than the long vowels are, it is the short vowels which are transcribed with IPA letters which resemble the English letters ''a e i o u.'' However, they are modified to show that they aren't exactly the Classical sounds. For the ''a'' sound of ''cat,'' the [[Old English]] letter ''[[æ]]'' was resurrected: {{IPA|/kæt/}}. The ''e i u'' sounds of ''pet, pit, put'' (not ''putt'') were originally written as capital letters, and that is sometimes still done with manual typewriters. However, small caps looked better, so they were for a time written {{sc|e i u}}. These took more cursive forms over time, and are today written {{IPA|/ɛ ɪ ʊ/}}: ''pet'' {{IPA|/pɛt/}}, ''pit'' {{IPA|/pɪt/}}, ''put'' {{IPA|/pʊt/}}. The latter, of course, is also the short ''oo'' sound of ''good'' {{IPA|/ɡʊd/}}. The ''u'' vowel of ''putt'' or ''cut'', is written as an upturned letter ''v'', e.g. ''cut'' {{IPA|/kʌt/}}.
The ''a'' sound in ''bra'' is written with a Greek ''[[Alpha|α]]'', which looks like a single-storey ''a.'' Because it's long in many dialects, it's {{IPA|/ɑː/}} in the IPA: {{IPA|/brɑː/}}. Likewise, the ''aw'' sound of ''law'' is long in many dialects, but, for many of you, different than the ''bra'' sound. It's written with an "open" ''o'' (just as {{IPA|/ɛ/}} looks like an open ''e'', since a small cap ''o'' looks just like a regular ''o''ː ''law'' {{IPA|/lɔː/}}. (
Finally, there's the slurred [[schwa]] sound found in many unstressed syllables, as at the end of ''sofa.'' This is written {{IPA|/ə/}}, a symbol used in many US dictionaries. The stressed syllable is marked with a tick: ''sofa'' {{IPA|/ˈsoʊfə/}}. Note that the letter {{IPA|/ə/}} is never used for a stressed vowel; for words like ''cut,'' we use {{IPA|/ʌ/}}: ''butter'' {{IPA|/ˈbʌtər/}}, ''cuppa'' {{IPA|/ˈkʌpə/}}.
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