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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 ''[[ash (letter)|ashæ]], ‹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 exact pronunciation of this sound varies considerably among English dialects.

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 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/}}. (Many of you might not make this distinction, in which case you can think of these vowel letters as being the same when reading the IPA.) For those of you who distinguish it, there is a third similar sound, the ''o'' of ''mop.'' This is written with the ''bra'' vowel letter rotated 180°: ''mop'' {{IPA|/mɒp/}}. (A rather unusual IPA letter, as that's an unusual vowel, not found in many languages). The vowel sound in ''bird'' is written as an upturned {{IPA|/ɛ/]}}, therefore it is written as {{IPA|/bɜrd/}}.