At 12:55:31 AM on Friday, June 8, 2007, Rick McCallister
wrote:
> I hear /o/ in <or>, to me it's very different from the
> /O/ in US pronunciation of <sorry> /sORiy/, borrow
> /bORow/, tomorrow /tumORow, t@.../, etc.
<shrug> I can't argue with what you hear. And your
examples don't help, because in the U.S. the stressed vowels
of <sorry>, <borrow>, and <tomorrow> have two different
pronunciations. The one that I grew up uses the same vowel
as <or>, <foreign>, <horrible>, etc., so that all are [Or],
but there's another, I think more common (now, at least),
that uses [Ar] (or possibly [A.r]) in <sorry>, <borrow>, and
<tomorrow>.
Putting together all of your comments so far, I'm guessing
that your /o/ is what I typically hear as [O], and your /O/
is what I typically hear as [A(.)]. But that leaves me
wondering what phoneme(s) you write for the vowel of <so>,
<toe>, <coat>, etc., since it certainly isn't the same as
the vowel of <or>. If I'm not mistaken, Fromkin & Rodman
would have /o/ in <so>, /O/ in <or> and the pronunciation of
<sorry> with which I grew up, and /a/ in the pronunciation
of <sorry> that I think you have in mind. (Their system
doesn't distinguish the vowel of <calm> and <father> from
that of <dog> and <lock>.)
[...]
> So I've dealt with many regional accents.
Likewise, though mine is a somewhat different set from
yours.
Brian