Graph showing Nasal sounds pronunciation before a

YOU JUST HAVE TO LEARN IT. NO OTHER WAY AROUND IT.

flowchart TD

    A["Old French nasal vowel
(loanwords)"]
    B["Middle English
Two competing pronunciations

/a/ ↔ /au/
before m, n, ng"]

    A --> B

%% ------------------------
%% /a/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> C["Stayed short"]
    C --> D["Modern /æ/
TRAP lexical set"]
    D --> D1["Examples:
dance (GA)
chance (GA)
branch (GA)"]

%% ------------------------
%% /au/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> E["/au/ pronunciation"]

    %% Normal development
    E --> F["Normal development"]
    F --> G["/ɔː/
THOUGHT lexical set"]
    G --> G1["Examples:
daughter
paw"]

    %% Early lengthening
    E --> H["Lengthened BEFORE
Great Vowel Shift"]
    H --> I["/aː/"]
    I --> J["Great Vowel Shift"]
    J --> K["/eɪ/
FACE lexical set"]
    K --> K1["Examples:
change
angel"]

     ------------------------
%% /a/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> C["Stayed short"]
    C --> D["Modern /æ/
TRAP lexical set"]
    D --> D1["Examples:
dance (GA)
chance (GA)
branch (GA)"]

%% ------------------------
%% /au/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> E["/au/ pronunciation"]

    %% Normal development
    E --> F["Normal development"]
    F --> G["/ɔː/
THOUGHT lexical set"]
    G --> G1["Examples:
daughter
paw"]

    %% Early lengthening
    E --> H["Lengthened BEFORE
Great Vowel Shift"]
    H --> I["/aː/"]
    I --> J["Great Vowel Shift"]
    J --> K["/eɪ/
FACE lexical set"]
    K --> K1["Examples:
change
angel"]

    %% Late lengthening
    E --> L["Lengthened AFTER
Great Vowel Shift"]
    L --> M["Did NOT participate in GVS"]
    M --> N["/ɑː/
BATH / PALM lexical set"]
    N --> N1["Examples:
dance (RP)
example"]

There was a class of Middle English words in which /au/ varied with /a/ before a nasal. These are nearly all loanwords from French, in which uncertainty about how to realize the nasalization of the French vowel resulted in two varying pronunciations in English. (One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English.)

Words with Middle English with the /au/ diphthong generally developed to ɒː in Early Modern English (e.g. paw, daughter). However, in some of the words with the /a ~ au/ alternation, especially short words in common use, the vowel instead developed into a long A. In words like change and angel, this development preceded the Great Vowel Shift, and so the resulting long A followed the normal development to modern /eɪ/. In other cases, however, the long A appeared later, and thus did not undergo the Great Vowel Shift, but instead merged with the long A that had developed before /r/ and some fricatives (as described above). Thus words like dance and example have come to be pronounced (in Standard Southern British, although mostly not in General American) with the /ɑː/ vowel of start and bath.

Words in this category may therefore have ended up with a variety of pronunciations in modern standard English: /æ/ (where the short A pronunciation survived), /ɑː/ (where the pronunciation with lengthened A was adopted), /ɔː/ (where the normal development of the AU diphthong was followed), and /eɪ/ (where the A was lengthened before the Great Vowel Shift). The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: TRAP for /æ/, BATH for RP /ɑː/ vs. General American /æ/, PALM for /ɑː/, THOUGHT for /ɔː/, FACE for /eɪ/. Although these words were often spelled with both ⟨a⟩ and ⟨au⟩ in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with ⟨au⟩ used only for those words which have /ɔː/; one common exception is aunt.

(I love (pun intended) how the a-before-nasal section is just a giant fuck you to your face. "Yeah there is this whole diagram worth explanation of what happened, but still you gotta learn what the words - because it was all fucking random")
Ironically, realizing where the rules stop is itself a sign that you've gone beyond beginner phonetics and into historical linguistics. Beginners think English pronunciation is completely random. Intermediate learners think everything must have a rule. Historical linguists eventually learn that the rule is often "there used to be a rule, and then 500 years of history happened." #commentary

Did it come from Old French?
Maybe.
Did it lengthen before GVS?
Maybe.
After GVS?
Maybe.
Different dialect?
Maybe.
Competing pronunciation?
Maybe.
Can we predict it?
...
No.

Pronouncing A
Pronouncing O

## Words
- Father 
- Bath
- Grass
- Laugh
  
---

## Sentences

- Arthur's father starts the car.
- Large Lizards lurk in dark corner.
- Smart shart swim in dark.
- Marthur and Arthur park the car.
- Target the dark wall with precision.
- I asked my father to park the car in the yard of the spa.
  

What is it?

ɑː

The open back unrounded vowel (or low back unrounded vowel)

Key Distinction: Length (ː) vs. Quality. Non-native speakers frequently mistake /ɑː/ as merely a lengthened version of /ʌ/ (as in strut) or /æ/ (as in trap). In reality, /ɑː/ requires a distinct pharyngeal retraction that completely alters its acoustic signature.

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![Pasted image 20260724152251.png](/img/user/attachments/Pasted%20image%2020260724152251.png)

Where is it pronounced?

• Its place of articulation is pharyngeal, which means it is articulated with the tongue root against the back of the throat (the pharynx).

• It is unrounded, which means that the lips are not rounded.

Vocalic equivalent between ɑ: and ʕ̞

The open back unrounded vowel (represented as [ɑ], similar to the "a" sound in "father") is produced by lowering the tongue and pulling the tongue root back toward the throat (pharynx). If you narrow that pharyngeal space just a fraction more, the vowel transitions into a pharyngeal approximant [ʕ̞].
So, phonetically, [ʕ̞] has just enough narrowing in the pharynx to be classed as a consonant, whereas [ɑ] keeps the pharynx open enough to remain a pure vowel.
When linguists say that [ɑ] is the vocalic equivalent of [ʕ̞], they mean these two sounds share the exact same active articulators—namely, the tongue root backing toward the pharyngeal wall—just set at slightly different distances.
Vocalic Equivalance

How is it pronounced?

Phonetically, /ɑː/ represents a state of maximal acoustic resonance and minimal lingual obstruction in the oral cavity.
- **Tongue Position:** Pushed down and drawn back as far as possible into the pharynx without creating a pharyngeal fricative.
- **Lip Posture:** Fully neutral to slightly spread (unrounded).

  
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  <iframe src="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPA_vowel_chart_with_audio#IPA_vowels" style="position: absolute; top: -180px; left: -50px; width: 120%; height: 900px; border: none;"></iframe>
</div>

**Interactive Vowel Chart**

When?

r-controlled vowels word+r

In late Middle English, pairs such as cat, cart, were pronounced [kat], [kart] respectively, distinguished only by the presence or absence of [r]. However, by the late 17th century they were also distinguished by the quality and length of the vowel.
 It has affected most varieties of contemporary English, which have distinct vowels in pairs such as cat, cart. In non-rhotic accents, the /r/ of cart has been lost; in Standard Southern British the word is pronounced /kɑːt/, distinguished from cat only by the quality and length of the vowel.
When a is immediately followed by r, the r controls the pronunciation of the vowel. The usual short-a (/æ/) and silent-e (/eɪ/) patterns no longer apply. Instead, ar is pronounced as its own r-controlled vowel sound (/ɑː/ in BrE, /ɑr/ in AmE).

not every a + r sequence is pronounced /ɑː/. Common patterns like are (care), air (fair), and ear (bear) have different pronunciations (/eə/ in BrE, /er/ in AmE). Those are separate spelling patterns built on ar, but they don't follow the basic ar → /ɑː/ pattern.

Why does Carrot not have the long a sound?

This lengthening occurred when /a/ was followed by non-pre-vocalic /r/; it did not generally apply before intervocalic /r/ (when the /r/ was followed by another vowel). Hence the first vowel of carrot and marry has normally remained the same as that of cat.

Then why do Barring and Starry have long a?

Inflected forms and derivatives of words ending in (historical) /r/ generally inherit the lengthened vowel, so words like barring and starry have /ɑː/ as do bar and star.

Broadening before Fricative f, θ, s

Occurance rules

Rarity

• It is inconsistent and sporadic
  • Broadening affected Standard English extremely inconsistently. It seems to have been favored when /a/ was adjacent to labial consonants or /r/.
  • It is apparent that it occurred most commonly in short words, especially monosyllables, that were common and well-established in English at the time broadening took place (c. 1500–1650).
  • Words of 3 or more syllables were hardly ever subject to broadening. Learned words, neologisms (such as gas, first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened.

Sounds before which broadening occurs

• Broadening of a happens before preconsonantal or morpheme-final voiceless fricatives /f, θ, s/
  • The voiceless fricative /ʃ/ has never promoted broadening in Standard English in words like ash and crash.

So why is Father broadened when it does not has any of those three sounds?

A particularly interesting case is that of the word father. In late Middle English this was generally pronounced [ˈfaðər], thus rhyming with gather [ˈɡaðər]. Broadening of father is notable both in two respects:

• its occurrence before an intervocalic voiced fricative [ð]
• its distribution in many accents that do not otherwise have broadening, such as those of North America.
  The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of father as "anomalous"
  Dobson, however, sees broadening in father as due to the influence of the adjacent /f/ and /r/ combined. Rather and lather appear to have been subject to broadening later, and in fewer varieties of English, by analogy with father.

Broadening spreading to its other forms

• Once broadening affected a particular word, it tended to spread by analogy to its inflectional derivatives. For example, from pass ([paːs]) there was also passing [ˈpaːsɪŋ].
  • In a phenomenon going back to Middle English, [f, θ] alternate with their voiced equivalents [v, ð]. For example, late Middle English path [paθ] alternated with paths [paðz]. When broadening applied to words such as path, it naturally extended to these derivatives: thus when [paθ] broadened to [paːθ], [paðz] also broadened to [paːðz]. This introduced broadening into the environment before a voiced fricative.

Compensatory lengthening

In case of compensatory lengthening of the short /a/ in words like calm, palm, psalm when /l/ was lost in this environment

Before Nasals m, n, ŋ

Some words in middle English with the /au/ diphthong developed to broad a.
The words in which a occurred before nasals, which were lengthened after the Great Vowel Shift became Broad a, but note that a before nasal word takes 4 types of sounds based on history. See Nasals and A

flowchart TD

    A["Old French nasal vowel
(loanwords)"]
    B["Middle English
Two competing pronunciations

/a/ ↔ /au/
before m, n, ng"]

    A --> B

%% ------------------------
%% /a/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> C["Stayed short"]
    C --> D["Modern /æ/
TRAP lexical set"]
    D --> D1["Examples:
dance (GA)
chance (GA)
branch (GA)"]

%% ------------------------
%% /au/ branch
%% ------------------------

    B --> E["/au/ pronunciation"]

    %% Normal development
    E --> F["Normal development"]
    F --> G["/ɔː/
THOUGHT lexical set"]
    G --> G1["Examples:
daughter
paw"]

    %% Early lengthening
    E --> H["Lengthened BEFORE
Great Vowel Shift"]
    H --> I["/aː/"]
    I --> J["Great Vowel Shift"]
    J --> K["/eɪ/
FACE lexical set"]
    K --> K1["Examples:
change
angel"]

    %% Late lengthening
    E --> L["Lengthened AFTER
Great Vowel Shift"]
    L --> M["Did NOT participate in GVS"]
    M --> N["/ɑː/
BATH / PALM lexical set"]
    N --> N1["Examples:
dance (RP)
example"]

Foreign borrowings

spa, taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach

Sources

• Quiz - Pronunciation Studio