Lessons Unit 1, lesson 6
ɑ as in cot
One short vowel, on its own page. It is quick and short — hear it alone, then find it inside each word below, then say the words yourself.
What do the marks mean?
Want the full walkthrough? Read the map explains every mark, with practice.
ɑthe o in cot
Open wide, like showing a doctor your throat: ah — cot, hot. In American English this o is an open ah sound, not a round British o.
Now say it yourself
Read each word from its sheet, out loud, three times. Where there's a play button, listen first and copy what you hear. Slow is fine — speaking clearly matters more than speaking fast. Tap a word's microphone to record yourself and see which sounds landed.
Check your pronunciation, on this device. The first use downloads a small AI listener (about 40 MB, one time, then it's cached). Your voice is analyzed here in your browser — it never leaves your device.
The accent trap
In American English, this vowel is open and unrounded — your lips stay relaxed and neutral while your mouth opens wide, like for a doctor's exam. Learners coming from other varieties of English often round their lips slightly, which pulls cot toward ɔː, the vowel in law. Keep your lips loose here; only your jaw does the work.
Spellings to watch
This sound is almost always spelled with a single o before one or more consonants: cot, hot, top, dot, odd, ox, on, chop, stop, shop. The letter a after w often points here too, as in watch or want, where the w pulls the following vowel toward this same open, unrounded sound.
A quick self-test
Say cot next to cat. Cot should be wider and further back in the mouth, without the sharp front tension of cat. Then compare hot with a rounded, gliding vowel like the one in hoat — if you find yourself puckering your lips at all on hot, you've drifted toward a different sound entirely.