MadTomVane

There have been all sorts of linguistic studies on how natives speak English. But, no one pays much attention to how people who learned it as a second language speak it. And so, I am doing this really simple survey to answer such questions. You've probably seen something like this before: I give you pairs of words and you tell me whether you pronounce the vowels different or the same (i.e. do they rhyme or not?).

"cot" and "caught":
"Mary," "merry," and "marry":
"hurry" and "furry":
"mirror" and "nearer":
"father" and "bother":
the "a" in "trap" and the "a" in "bath":

The results will be available at http://students.csci.unt.edu/~kun/foreign.html but it isn't up yet (try again tomorrow).

MadTomVane

And don't forget to tell us what country you're from, or where you learned English.

The_FD

Hi

I am french native and learnt english at school (for a bit only) and in the states (Boston and New York areas first and Florida then)

So what I would say to answer your question is:

"cot" and "caught": not the same, the o being a short vowel while au is much longer
"Mary," "merry," and "marry": a slight difference I guess, I open my mouth a bit wider to say marry or mary (which are the same) compared with merry.
"hurry" and "furry": the same
"mirror" and "nearer": the same
"father" and "bother": just as mary and merry, I am opening my mouth wider to say the a from father than to say the o from bother.
the "a" in "trap" and the "a" in "bath" Could be the same, but when talking pretty fast I guess the a from bath is not as well pronounced as it should be

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Nadine

I'm Belgian, the Flemish part, (my native language is Dutch) and I learned English in secondary school, as well as in high school. (British English)

I would say all sounds are pronounced differently, except "hurry and furry" which for me sound exactly the same.
In "father" and "bother", I would say there is only a very little difference in sound, but still different.

Nadine

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Popodo

Hi,

I'm French and I live in England.
The only words that that sound alike are hurry and furry.

Popodo