You've got guts! The /ɒ/ and /ʌ/ sounds in English.

In this episode, we're practising the contrast between the British English vowel sounds /ɒ/ and /ʌ/. We're reviewing some common words with both sounds, before looking at some minimal pairs and sentences.

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Transcript

This week is a contrast which two of my students have recently requested an episode on, but one which my learners frequently find tricky, and for good reason! We’re looking at the difference between the short vowels /ɒ/ and /Ʌ/. We’ve spoken about each of these sounds before in other episodes, so if you haven’t yet listened to season 1, episode 8 “Top Dog” or season 2, episode 17 “Luck or look”, I do suggest that you start there. It’s important to note at this point that not every speaker, including first language English speakers, has these sounds in their phonetic range, but even if you know that you don’t, and don’t want to, today’s podcast will still be interesting and important from a listening point of view. Beyond the two sounds we’re looking at today, you may also find that confusion between /ɒ/ and /æ/, or /Ʌ/ and /æ/, also creeps in here: those will all be focuses for other episodes.

We will briefly recap how to make the two sounds, and some common words with each sound, before contrasting them more closely and practising some sentences with both sounds.

Let’s start by reviewing /ɒ/.

So, as I noted in that “top dog” episode, the /ɒ/ sound is really one of the distinguishing features of English from England: it’s a low, back vowel. In a lot of Englishes, it’s replaced by a sound closer to /ɑ:/, and you may find you consciously or subconsciously use that sound too. If you want to make the /ɒ/ sound, your tongue needs to be low at the back of your mouth. Your mouth should be open, but your lips are rounded. Now vibrate your vocal cords in a short burst. Remember English short vowels are *very* short! /ɒ/

Let’s review just ten words with /ɒ/:

1. boss
2. coffee
3. cost
4. got
5. holiday
6. impossible
7. lost
8. not 
9. stop
10. watch

And just one sentence with a lot of those /ɒ/ sounds:

-       The forest is popular with orange frog spotters.

Moving on to /Ʌ/, as I said in that “luck or look” episode, speakers from – broadly speaking – the north of England replace /Ʌ/ with /ʊ/, so again, if you’re exposed to a variety of accents, you’ll hear these words pronounced in at least two ways. In fact, as previously mentioned, I use both ways, so just one speaker can expose you to both! If you want to make the /Ʌ/ sound, it can be easiest to start from the relaxed ‘schwa’ sound. So, start with the mouth fully relaxed, as you would for schwa, and then open the jaw down, and move the back of the tongue down. Vibrate your vocal cords quickly, and you should get /Ʌ/.  

Again, let’s review just ten words with /Ʌ/

1.       colour

2.       enough

3.       love

4.       money

5.       much

6.       number

7.       other

8.       result

9.       summer

10.   under

… And one sentence with lots of /Ʌ/

You must take enough bus money on Monday.

Ok, let’s move on to contrasting the sounds.  

Transitioning between the sounds can help recognise the difference between them, and you should notice that the main difference is in jaw and lip position: moving from the rounded lips of /ɒ/ to a long open jaw for /Ʌ/. You should also find that the middle of the tongue moves higher in your mouth for /Ʌ/. This is a really small difference and you may notice it best by putting a (clean!) finger gently on the middle of your tongue – not too far back, the change isn’t there and you don’t want to gag!

Now for some minimal pairs with /ɒ/ and /Ʌ/.

We’ll read the first 7 together:

1. body – buddy
2. bomb- bum
3. boss – bus
4. collar – colour
5. cough – cuff
6. cot – cut
7. dog – dug

For the next seven, I’ll read the /ɒ/ word: can you read both? We’ll do the first one together as an example:

1. fond 

You should have read fond -fund

1. gone
2. got 
3. lock 
4. long 
5. not 
6. odder

Now listen again and check:

1. fond -fund 
2. gone – gun
3. got – gut
4. lock – luck
5. long – lung
6. not – nut
7. odder- udder

For the final seven, I’ll read the /Ʌ/ word: can you read both? Again, we’ll do the first one together as an example:

1. shut

You should have read shut- shot (or shot- shut!)

1. suck
2. sudden
3. sung
4. stump
5. worrier
6. rung

Now listen to both forms and check:

1. shut - shot
2. suck - sock
3. sudden - sodden
4. sung - song
5. stump - stomp
6. worrier - warrior
7. rung -wrong

You’ll have noticed that these minimal pairs all have the vowel sounds in the middle of a word. I couldn’t think of any at the beginning or ends of words, but it’s worth noting that in some English-from-England accents, you’ll hear words whose standard pronunciation would be /Ʌ/ pronounced with the /ɒ/, with “one” or “once” being perhaps the most noticeable.

Ok, let’s try some sentences with words from those minimal pairs.

1. You’ve got guts!
2. Bad luck! You rung the wrong number! 
3. The dog dug in the mud until its colourful collar was brown!
4. He’s sung the song for so long he’s hurt his lungs!
5. The warrior worried about suddenly getting sodden socks. It’s true, sodden socks suck!

As always, it would be great for you to see if you can make some more!

Finally, we looked at the “Betty Botter” tongue twister the first time we did /ɒ/, but it would be a great one to practise again to work on the /ɒ/ /Ʌ/ contrast some more. We’ll do the first line here, but I’ll put the whole text on my Patreon again for those of you who’d like a more extended practice. There’s a video of me reading the whole thing in my Instagram Reels too.

So, the first line, is “Betty Botter bought a bit of butter”.

There we go, well done, that’s the end of this week’s workout.