This is a “short” or “checked” vowel sound, so is always followed by a consonant.
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Is letter ‘a’ in the word ‘all’ said with a short ‘o’ sound?
It depends on your accent. In Australian English, it’s an “or” sound like in “for”, “saw” and “walk”.
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?
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?
Thanks Alison, I do live in Australia and trying very hard to improve my accent so that can be understood. I was talking about the long “o” sound as in law, all. When should I make that sound?
Hi Liliana, the words that are typically pronounced as in “law” and “all” are all on these lists, there are about a dozen common spellings. http://www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/sorted-by-sound/aw/
How about the ‘oh’ in ‘ohm’?
And ‘teraohm’ could apply too?
I do have it listed, see http://www.spelfabet.com.au/spelling-lists/sorted-by-sound/oh/oh-as-in-doh
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.
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
Thanks so much; yes, that was very helpful!
Just wondering about yacht?
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
The Dutch pronunciation of CH in ‘yacht’ matches the Scots pronunciation of CH in loch, Buchan and Lachlan.
Alison, thanks for this brilliant resource. A huge appreciation for the time and effort you put in to develop this website.
As a literacy tutor working in Northeast Scotland where local accents are still strong, it is fun adjusting wordlists to the requirements of individuals… none the less your wordlists are incredibly useful.
(apologies, my previous post failed to include CH)
Hi Peter, thanks for the lovely feedback, glad you’ve found my website useful even though some lists need Scots accent adjustment. I hope you and yours are all enjoying summer, it’s windy and wet here, but I have a lovely warm sweater (well, we call them jumpers) which I held up the Haggis Bus to buy in a cute shop in Ullapool in 1998. All the best, Alison