English Pronunciation: O Sounds

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English Pronunciation: Sounds with O

The American O sounds can be difficult. There are 3 distinct sounds, the short O as in "hot," the long O as in "boat" and the reduced O, the phonetic name is the schwa sound, as in "above" (say "abuv"). The basic rules are these:

use short O for simple spellings in words or word parts
use long O with complex spellings, i.e. a silent vowel near the O
use the reduced O (the "u" as in "up") sometimes when O is not stressed
most exceptions to the above rules will be found in very common words

Overall, the best thing to do is realize that O has three sounds. Listen carefully to American English speakers and take the time to look up the pronunciation of words.

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Short O	Long O	Reduced O
beyond	bone	above
blog	bowl	blood
body	bold	labor
brought	broke	brother
complement	comb	company
conference	according	complete
confident	course	country
cost	cold	cover
dog	don't	discover
dollars	donate	develop
holiday	home	honey
involve	innovate	income
job	joke	major
loss	alone	tailor
lot	load	love
modern	motivate	month
office	order	effort
often	old	occur
online	only	other
possible	post	possess
probably	probe	police
problem	prose	procedure
product	program	position
profit	protein	potential
rock	road	religion
soft	scone	some
solid	sold	solidity
solve	social	society
stock	stole	solution
thought	though	thorough
toss	toast	today
wok	wore	work

Notes on Other Spellings and Sounds

AU/AW - usually has a short O sound: audio, cause, auto, launch, draw, saw, law, awful
OU/OW (double vowel as in "ouch"): down, flower, vowel, out, south, accounting, round, sound, pound, found, about, count, brown, thousand
OI/OY (double vowel, long O to long E): point, boy
OO (spelling of a long U sound): boot, food. Or use relaxed sound as in "book." Study these sounds.

To perfect your O sounds, try these words that have 2 different O sounds: download, follow, broccoli, common, thorough, outrageous, commodity, outsource, opposite, cholesterol, coronary, technology, economy, opponent, proposal

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