pronunciation: /ɑː/, /æ/ and /a/? -IPA vowel sounds- (2025)

tell us what variety of English interests you most
I am interested in British English.

Pleaase give us some sentences as examples

British cat
cat | Definition of cat in English by Oxford Dictionaries
/kat/

British cart
/kɑːt/
cart | Definition of cart in English by Oxford Dictionaries

American cat
/kæt/
cat | Definition of cat in US English by Oxford Dictionaries

I can get that /kɑːt/ is just a longer /kat/, but I can't get what is that last third sound different from the others.

The wikipedia article has audio of the vowels
Vowel - Wikipedia
Thank you very much, but can you summarise it?

/ɑː/ as in father is a long, back vowel. The tongue is raised further back. You can hear this in southern English pronunciations as well as American English. (In northern England and in Australia, you probably won't hear the back vowel.)

For /æ/ and /a/, please look at this thread: pronunciation: /æ/ vowel (as in TRAP)

She'lock Holmes said:

tThe wikipedia article has audio of the vowels
Vowel - Wikipedia
Thank you very much, but can you summarise it?

Click to expand...

I hate pronunciation threads - using words to illustrate sounds would only work if any given word is pronounced identically by everyone

That's why audio is helpful - and no it's not possible to summarize audio files - the whole idea is to listen to them

I use this web page for the sounds of IPA symbols. Click on any symbols and it speaks it, without moving the page:

IPA Chart with Sounds | International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds

I use this page for the sounds of English. It has AE clips of each example word, and BE clips of many of them:

The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet | Antimoon

JulianStuart said:

I hate pronunciation threads - using words to illustrate sounds would only work if any given word is pronounced identically by everyone

Click to expand...

I agree. In fact I !!

To listen to the difference between /a/ and /æ/, listen to an old fashioned southern British pronunciation say from 1950 and a current pronunciation. An old fashioned British pronunciation has /æ/, and young listeners might think an old-fashioned 'cat' sounds more like 'ket'.

Go here, for instance: Funny old vowels

dojibear said:

IPA Chart with Sounds | International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds
The sounds of English and the International Phonetic Alphabet | Antimoon

Click to expand...

And both play on my iPad so

I hate pronunciation threads - using words to illustrate sounds would only work if any given word is pronounced identically by everyone

That's why audio is helpful - and no it's not possible to summarize audio files - the whole idea is to listen to them

I use this web page for the sounds of IPA symbols. Click on any symbols and it speaks it, without moving the page:

IPA Chart with Sounds | International Phonetic Alphabet Sounds

--
To listen to the difference between /a/ and /æ/, listen to an old fashioned southern British pronunciation say from 1950 and a current pronunciation. An old fashioned British pronunciation has /æ/, and young listeners might think an old-fashioned 'cat' sounds more like 'ket'.

Go here, for instance: Funny old vowels

That's perfectly what I wanted, thanks!

Cenzontle said:

Thank JulianStuart you for that audio vowel chart! A great resource.
But...do you hear a difference between its [ɐ] and its [ʌ]?
Or between its [ɔ] and its [ɒ]?
If so, your hearing is sharper than mine.

Click to expand...

I didn't listen to them all - I just downloaded the wikipanion app and confirmed I could hear sounds on my iPad Next time I'm waiting for plane I'll compare that site with the two that dojibear linked to, for consistency!