This is a “short” or “checked” vowel sound, so is always followed by a consonant.

o as in pot

a as in want

au as in fault

e as in entrée

ou as in cough

eau as in bureaucracy

i as in lingerie

ow as in knowledge

oh as in John

eo as in cheongsam

 

13 responses to “o”

  1. Theresa Wolf Wilson says:

    Is letter ‘a’ in the word ‘all’ said with a short ‘o’ sound?

    • alison says:

      It depends on your accent. In Australian English, it’s an “or” sound like in “for”, “saw” and “walk”.

      • Liliana says:

        Is there any guide regarding this sound? Like before r and w, is always or sometimes? Does “al “. has the long o sound as in all, already, always?

        • alison says:

          I don’t entirely understand your question, this is the “short o” sound. I think the problem is that you probably don’t have an Australian accent, so the vowel classification on this site will sometimes not make sense to you. Can you refer to a website written for the accent you speak?

  2. Nathan says:

    How about the ‘oh’ in ‘ohm’?
    And ‘teraohm’ could apply too?

  3. Vicky Gammon says:

    Hi,
    I’m trying to work out how to teach the spelling of ‘what’. Should I relate it to the words that begin with ‘wa’ and have the short o sound? Google isn’t helping me.

    • alison says:

      I usually tell kids two things about “what”:
      1. It’s a question word and these mostly start with ‘wh’ as in when, where, why, which and of course who (but not how). I tell them we pronounce the W in most of these words but the H in who, because English is a bit of an old weird language, sorry, not my fault. Then we practise some ‘wh’ words.
      2. After the sound /w/ we usually write /o/ with letter A, as in was, want, wallet, wander, swan, quantity and quality. In the olden days the pronunciation would have matched the spelling better but over time pronunciation changes, sorry, again not my fault. Then we practise some words with this spelling pattern.
      This seems to work OK, for some kids the two patterns can be addressed at once but others need to do them one at a time. Hope that’s useful. Alison

  4. Vicky says:

    Thanks so much; yes, that was very helpful!

  5. ellen says:

    Just wondering about yacht?

    • alison says:

      Hi Ellen, ‘yacht’ is probably one of those rare words with spelling that mostly has to be explained by its etymology, and remembered by saying it a funny way (spelling voice) because the phonology and morphology are not a lot of help. The ‘a’ is like in ‘want’ and ‘was’, which is fairly common though it usually occurs after /w/ not /y/, but the cht is Dutch and not in any other words in English, as far as I know. Luckily it’s not a word most of us have to use much! Alison

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