# Do American accents distinguish "aw" and short "o" sounds? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [September 23, 2004, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742 "2004-09-23T20:15:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 9
**Author:** ![blowero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/41988e/32.png) [@blowero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blowero)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2004, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742/161 "2004-09-28T18:03:08Z")
> [@TellMeI'mNotCrazy](#): > > Firstly, (and this is just a general comment, not to anyone in particular) I don’t get how dialectal differences can get to be such a heated subject. Tomato, tomahto, and all that jazz. Well that was _supposed_ to be my point - that there’s no ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ here, but some people seem to have a real “I’m right and you’re wrong” attitude about it, and I guess that kind of irks me. ---
**Author:** ![W.Fikere\_Tomba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/f9ae1b/32.png) [@W.Fikere\_Tomba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/W.Fikere_Tomba)\ **Post date:** [September 28, 2004, 10:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742/162 "2004-09-28T22:44:09Z")
> [@blowero](#): > > But I wasn’t talking about YOU. You jumped in and interjected your own personal pronounciation into what I was saying. I do not have a special sound that I use only for the word “or”, nor, apparently, does CurtC, the person to whom I was responding. I still maintain that, IMO, some people hear the long-o sound as being a completely different vowel sound when it’s affected by the trailing consonant. If you personally happen to _actually_ use a completely different vowel sound, that’s fine - I wasn’t talking to you. At any rate, I’m tired of arguing with you. Perhaps we should both stop responding to each other in this thread. I’m sorry. I misinterpreted you. In your response to CurtC, you said “we,” and I thought you meant it in the universal sense. I did not realize until just now that you were only talking about yourself and CurtC. I thought you were making a general statement about _all_ English speakers, based only on your own experience. > [@blowero](#): > > You came off as being argumentative, pedantic, and condescending about it. If that wasn’t your intention, then I apologize for my reaction. No, I think your reaction was appropriate. I _was_ being argumentative, pedantic, and condescending, because I thought you were being stupid. I did you an injustice by thinking so, and I’m sorry. I don’t think we should stop responding to each other, because I am still interested in what you have to say. But I promise to read it more carefully! ---
**Author:** ![elfkin477](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/a9a28c/32.png) [@elfkin477](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elfkin477)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 8:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742/163 "2004-09-30T08:44:34Z")
> [@Bambi Hassenpfeffer](#): > > Um, I always thought the joke in there was that the daughter was conceived in the Concorde – which may be why they pulled it from the air so quickly. No offense to you and yours, but I doubt most people in the US (thanks to our stellar educational system) have even heard of Concord NH outside of the context of the Revolutionary War. Maybe there’s a joke about the jet as well, but what I was talking about is in a car commerical for the Chrysler Concorde (which is obviously named after the jet). And you’re thinking of Concord MA, not NH, in regards to the Revolutionary war. ---
**Author:** ![Aeschines](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aeschines/32/16251_2.png) [@Aeschines](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aeschines)\ **Post date:** [September 30, 2004, 9:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742/164 "2004-09-30T09:45:38Z")
I realized from this discussion that I do, in fact, pronouce them differently, although I had not been able clearly to recognize the difference. Thanks! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-american-accents-distinguish-aw-and-short-o-sounds/265742.md?page=8)