I can't tell the difference between [o] and [Q].

Can anyone provide an audio sample?

There's a really big height difference between those sounds. ([o] is a close-mid back rounded vowel, and [Q] is an open back rounded vowel.) You can hear recordings of all the IPA vowels here ( http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter1/vowels.html ).

Just for some examples, [o] is found in Scottish English "goat", Australian English "core", German "Boot", French "beau", or Italian "sono". [Q] is found in RP "pot", American English "caught" for many speakers, and Hungarian "Magyar".

''[Q] is found in RP "pot", American English "caught" for many speakers''

General American vowel in caught is /O/ (open O, reversed C) [not Q]

<<General American vowel in caught is /O/ (open O, reversed C) [not Q]>>

It can be considered phonemic /O/, but outside of New York, most speakers use a more open vowel, closer to [Q].

I agree with Josh. Outside of New York, most cot-caught-unmerged Americans use a more open vowel like [Q], which sounds very different from the vowel they would use in a word like "court". Just listen to some of the audio samples at m-w.com, for example.

Anniejp: Did you perhaps mean that you have trouble distinguishing between [O] and [Q]? I have to say that [o] and [Q] sound very different to me, and I can't think of any language that would "mix them up". Here's another IPA chart with sound: http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/charts.html I find it useful to compare the two when I'm trying to decide on a transcription.

Josh Lalonde,

I checked out the vowel chapter of the chart you listed. It's very useful, but the audio sample of o-e diagraph given in the site sounds more like a hooked schwa to me, is this because of my bad ear or is the sample wrong?
http://www.paulmeier.com/ipa/vowels.html

Bostonians and some other New Englanders use /Q/ in words like "bother" or in "Sox" when referring to their beloved baseball team (which is often playfully mocked in the sports journalism world). Otherwise, this sound doesn't really exist in American English, as it has been merged with /A/. The New York sound that people are referring to is merely a very backed version of /O/. It is not a rounded vowel like /Q/.

Ryan, I think you're completely mistaken. You're confusing phonetics with phonemics. [Q], *the sound*, is extremely common in North American English, even though it isn't equivalent to the historical phoneme /Q/.

<<Bostonians and some other New Englanders use /Q/ in words like "bother" or in "Sox" when referring to their beloved baseball team (which is often playfully mocked in the sports journalism world).>>

In the Massachusetts dialect, of which I'm an exemplar, the historical phonemes /O:/ and /Q/ merged into a free vowel, [Q:]. Historical /A:/ (free) is preserved as [a:] or [A:]. (I'm using length marks here principally to make clear the difference between checked and free vowels.)

father [a:] or [A:]
bother [Q:]
cot [Q:]
caught [Q:]

I think you're under the misconception that Bostonians preserve the historical /Q/ phoneme that's found in RP; that is false. The checked phoneme /Q/ has merged into the free phoneme /O:/, which itself became more open, giving us a free vowel [Q:].

<<Otherwise, this sound doesn't really exist in American English, as it has been merged with /A/.>>

The sound [Q:] most certainly does exist in American English, and in fact it's quite widespread. It's the historical checked *phoneme*, /Q/, which has merged with /A:/. In a process similar to what occurred in Massachusetts, the checked phoneme /Q/ merged with a free phoneme, in this case /A:/. The historical free phoneme /O:/ became laxed, yielding a free vowel [Q:].

father [A:]
bother [A:]
cot [A:]
caught [Q:]

(And I should add that speakers in Canada, the Western US, and some other areas merge these two remaining free phonemes into one phoneme, realized as [A:] or [Q:].)

Do you really think that many North Americans use the same vowel qualities in "caught" and "court", like in RP? Of course they don't. The distinctive New York characteristic is that they *do* preserve the closer value of historical /O:/, like in RP.

<<The New York sound that people are referring to is merely a very backed version of /O/. It is not a rounded vowel like /Q/.>>

I'm sorry, but you're completely mistaken here. The salient characteristic of the New York vowel is not backness (even the open North American realizations of [Q:] tend to be very back) but height. New Yorkers use an open-mid to mid vowel, [O:], similar to the one used in RP. And it is most certainly rounded.

Ryan, I should note that my merged low back vowel is also [Q], though in my case it includes 'father' and like words as well. (I'm Canadian, from Ottawa)

father, bother, cot, caught: all with [Q]

Josh:

I never said Canadians don't use the vowel. It's Americans besides Bostonians who generally don't.

Lazar:

First off, you are correct about the distinction between /O/ and /Q/. I miswrote due to my reference to /A/ in my explanation, which is obviously not a rounded vowel.

Second, I don't believe that the phonetic realization of the vowel that you speak of is a rounded fully open back one in most speakers of the United States. In cot/caught merged American speakers, father, bother, cot *and* caught are all best realized as /A/, with very little to no rounding. In Midlands speakers, caught is pronounced as /O/, not as /Q/, and cot is pronounced as /A/. In northern speakers, there is the NCVS, of course, and we realize caught as /A/ while distinguishing "bother" and "cot" by fronting them. In the south, they glide the caught vowel. And in New York, they *still* realize caught as /O/, which is a rounded vowel, my bad, but is not an open vowel but only an open-mid one. It is in fact a *higher* vowel than the standard American /O/, but it is nonetheless still /O/. I quote the Wikipedia article on the New York dialect:

"The low back chain shift The [ɔ] vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, and coffee and the often homophonous [ɔr] in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American. This vowel is typically above [ɔ], the corresponding vowel in General American; in the most extreme New York accents, it is even higher and possesses an inglide: [ʊə]. [ɑ] in father and [ɑr] in car are tensed and move to a position abandoned by [ɔ]. The result is that car is often similar to core in parts of New England. Some words not originally from this word class, such as God, on and Bob join the [ɑ] group. This shift is robust and has spread to many non-European American New Yorkers."

Sure, some New Yorkers realize it as /Q/, but this is not the "standard" New York pronunciation. As for the vowel sound in "court" versus "caught," I don't have any evidence onhand for rhotic vowels, but I do know that the vowel is listed as Or\ in the Wikipedia entry for the General American accent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet_for_English

as per the word "bore" in that particular entry. And besides, I was not really referring to rhotic vowels in my entry. I was trying to say that /Q/ in a word like "bother" is not realized in other American dialects. I consider rhotic vowels a different animal altogether.

So tell me, where is it that people in the US pronounce /Q/ so much besides the New England area? You seem to know what you are talking about, so I will definitely admit I'm wrong if you show me some evidence of this phenomenon. As it is, I think you are misleading readers who are not from this country into thinking that /Q/ is a common sound in this country, when I do not think it is, and it is definitely not a part of the General American accent, which is what many of the foreign readers here are trying to learn.

<<In cot/caught merged American speakers, father, bother, cot *and* caught are all best realized as /A/, with very little to no rounding.>>

Rounding is variable in c-c merged dialects. It definitely occurs in California, and I've heard of it occuring in other parts of the West as well.

<<Sure, some New Yorkers realize it as /Q/, but this is not the "standard" New York pronunciation.>>

You seem to be misunderstanding: both Lazar and I said that New York uses [O] for the THOUGHT set (though ingliding forms occur as well [O@, U@]. It is the rest of the non-merged US that uses [Q] in this set (with some exceptions, like the Southern [Ao]). Note that this is not equivalent to RP /Q/, which differs in being phonemically short, lax/checked (only occurring in closed syllables), possibly more rounded, and is in fact sometimes raised toward [O].

<<As for the vowel sound in "court" versus "caught," I don't have any evidence onhand for rhotic vowels, but I do know that the vowel is listed as Or\ in the Wikipedia entry for the General American accent...as per the word "bore" in that particular entry. And besides, I was not really referring to rhotic vowels in my entry. I was trying to say that /Q/ in a word like "bother" is not realized in other American dialects. I consider rhotic vowels a different animal altogether. >>

You seem again to have misunderstood. Lazar was saying that in GenAm and most other North American accents, the vowel in THOUGHT (caught) is different from the one in NORTH (court). The vowel in 'court' is indeed [O], while that of 'caught' is not.
court [kOr/t]
caught [kQ:t] (the length mark is mostly to differentiate this from RP /Q/, and to show that it occurs in open syllables)

<<Anniejp: Did you perhaps mean that you have trouble distinguishing between [O] and [Q]? I have to say that [o] and [Q] sound very different to me, and I can't think of any language that would "mix them up".>>

I suspect Anniejp may be a native speaker of Spanish. Although [o] and [Q] sound strikingly different to English speakers (and Portuguese speakers, and French speakers, etc), they may be easily confused if one's native phonology has only two rounded back vowels, one of them fully high.

>>In northern speakers, there is the NCVS, of course, and we realize caught as /A/ while distinguishing "bother" and "cot" by fronting them.<<

Depends, though; here in Milwaukee the NCVS is prevalent except amongst the oldest of individuals, and yet most individuals do not deround the COUGHT vowel, or if they do, they only do so sporadically. Consequently, most people do not have an opposition of [a] and [A] but rather one of [a] and [Q]. However, though, [A] can be found, but only as a positional allophone of /a/, and sporadically from some other things such as the monophthongization of /aU/.

>>court [kOr/t]
caught [kQ:t] (the length mark is mostly to differentiate this from RP /Q/, and to show that it occurs in open syllables)<<

Note that I would transcribe the vowels in both of these as short, but that's because I do not use vowel length marking in such a "conventional" manner and rather use it to mark actual vowel length (but ignoring the effect of stress, though - a vowel marked as short in a stressed syllable may be just as long as a vowel marked as long in an unstressed syllable).

<<I suspect Anniejp may be a native speaker of Spanish. Although [o] and [Q] sound strikingly different to English speakers (and Portuguese speakers, and French speakers, etc), they may be easily confused if one's native phonology has only two rounded back vowels, one of them fully high.>>

That may be true, but I would expect Spanish speakers to confuse [o] with [u] and [Q] with [O], rather than both [o] and [Q] with [O]. What was your experience in learning English?