/ɔ/as in law
You likely produce this vowel using your Spanish /o/, raising the tongue and rounding the lips more tightly than the English target calls for, since Spanish only has one back mid/high rounded vowel to draw on.
What you probably do
You likely produce this vowel using your Spanish /o/, raising the tongue and rounding the lips more tightly than the English target calls for, since Spanish only has one back mid/high rounded vowel to draw on.
How natives do it
Americans keep the tongue lower and further back, round the lips only lightly, and hold the vowel steady with no upward glide — noticeably more open than the Spanish /o/ and without the closing movement of English 'oh'.
Why it matters
Over-raising and over-rounding this vowel can make 'caught' sound like 'coat' or 'law' like 'low' to American ears; lowering your jaw slightly and relaxing the lip rounding helps keep this sound clearly distinct from the oʊ diphthong.
Hear the difference
Words this touches
Spanish speakers often substitute /o/.
How the mouth differs
Spanish /o/ is a higher, more rounded, and more tense back vowel than English /ɔ/, which sits lower and more open with only light lip rounding and no offglide. Spanish speakers tend to raise and over-round this vowel toward their native /o/, pulling it perceptually closer to the English diphthong oʊ (as in 'coat').
Listen for the pattern
Raising and rounding this vowel too much can make 'caught' sound closer to 'coat' or 'law' closer to 'low', which is especially noticeable to General American listeners who do not merge this vowel with /oʊ/ (though many merge it with /ɑ/ instead).
Reader ratings and feedback are coming soon.
Sources (2)
- Using multiple measures to document change in English vowels produced by Japanese, Korean, and Spanish speakers: the case for goodness and intelligibility. — Amber D Franklin, Carol Stoel-Gammon, 2014
- Both goodness ratings and intelligibility scores effectively captured improvements in vowel accuracy following pronunciation training.
- The relationship between goodness and intelligibility varies by vowel; vowels like /æ/ and /ʌ/ depend more on goodness for listener identification than /i/ and /e/.
- Some vowels received better mean intelligibility scores but poorer mean goodness ratings after training, indicating that high intelligibility does not always require high perceived quality.
- Hualde, J.I. (2005). The Sounds of Spanish. Cambridge University Press.