----- Original Message -----
From: Mark Odegard
To: phoNet@egroups.com
Sent: Friday, April 14, 2000 1:47 AM
Subject: Re: [phoNet] O

It's not uncommon in American English to unround the starting point of [oʊ] (the most accurate transcription would be [ɤʊ]).

Mark writes:

I take your word for it, Piotr. I listened at the Ladefoged site. [ɤ] ('ram's head', as I remember) is a vowel I don't really recognize as English.

Not the carefully pronounced "canonical" variant -- but the starting point of the "goat" vowel would be slightly lower and centralised, i.e. modified in the direction of schwa. Some phoneticians have transcribed the unrounded variant as [ʌʊ], but this might suggest a rather open vowel, like what London Cockney has for "oh". The RP pronunciation is [ɜʊ], with the starting point unrounded but certainly more central than in GenAm.

Piotr