correct transcription of the u-sound in 'cut', 'fun', 'understand'...

Hello, I have a question about the u-sound in words like cut, particularly in American English.

Usually, these words are transcribed using the /ʌ/-symbol (/\, open-mid back unrounded), but I doubt this is the correct sound (I can't remember ever hearing it, but then again, I'm not a native speaker).

In school, they taught us to pronounce more like the /ɐ/ (upside-down a, near-open central), but again, I don't think that's how most people pronouce it. In addition to the a-like-sound, I think also I'm hearing some u-flavor, but it's not really an /ʊ/ (though maybe some UK speakers tend to pronounce it in such a way).

Am I right that there is no IPA-symbol corresponding to that sound (or can this be achieved using one of the whacky modifiers)? Or is it just my untrained ears that are deceiving me?

Thanks,

Thomas (from Germany)

Thanks,

CalifJim wrote:

The only IPA symbol I've ever seen used for that sound is the "inverted V".

Wikipedia claims the usage of that inverted V only has historical reasons:

In RP and GA, <ʌ> is used for [ɐ] because it is the traditional symbol used for the phonemic transcription of this vowel.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_central_vowel)

Anyway, I'm beginning to think that the inverted a really is the correct transcription, and most of my confusion arose because we actually were taught to use /a/ (as in German 'Ball') in school, which is obviously not right. I believe the standard pronunciaton of 'u' is not exactly like the samples of /ɐ/ I've heard (which also differ a little bit from each other), but probably close enough.

Thomas

PS. Are you aware of any websites that have sound samples of spoken texts and corresponding IPA-transcriptions other than http://accent.gmu.edu/ ?

I found the page, it's
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/index.html
Thanks, that is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

So, judgin from the sound samples on
http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/VowelsandConsonants/course/chapter4/4vowels.html
I think I still have troubles recognizing the /\-sound on stressed and unstressed syllables as the same sound (the reduced one is a schwa and certainly different from the others). I hope I can resolve that by going over the lectures more deeply.

The alternative 'upside-down a' I was talking about is actually this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Near-open_central_vowel
Since the character encoding of this page here is UTF-8, the symbol should appear correctly if you have an appropriate font installed. The remark at the bottom
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet
suggests that the Internet Explorer doesn't just use an alternative font for the symbols when the currently used font doesn't have it - which seems pretty dumb to me, but it shouldn't be used anyway.

Thomas

the second 'o' in confront is the same sound as in 'stock'

Maybe in British English.  Certainly not in American English.  In AmE both 'o's in 'confront' are pronounced the same, the same as the vowel in 'stuck'.  The difference is stress.  The first 'o' in AmE 'confront' is unstressed, so usually transcribed as an "upside-down e".  The second is usually transcribed as an "inverted V".  To my ear the two are one and the same sound in 'confront', except for the difference in stress.

CJ