Unreleased final consonants

Glad to make you smile CJ

There's an ad on TV at the moment where a woman says 'hot' (same vowel sound) and the way she says it makes me laugh every time. She spits it out in such a stroppy and sharp way that she sounds like a terribly-posh-indeed 4-year-old in a mood! Just that one word,out of everything she says, comes across in a weird way.

I'd venture to say that most Americans use /a:/ in father, cot, and caught -- all three.

And I don't believe Italian has the vowel in British frog either!

CJ

I was taught that that o sound (occhio) was closest to the au in author (for those Americans who speak an AmE in which that sound has not been changed to the a in father) -- a sound nearly identical to the British au in author.  I don't believe that is the same as the British o in frog, no.

Of course, I may have been taught wrong, but if so, then it would have been by a native speaker from Rome who had her sense of speech sounds (whether American or Italian) messed up. 

CJ

Well, maybe it's a little different, because there are several kinds of "o" in British English, I think, and there are several kinds of "o" in Italian too. It depends on the accent... Some vowels (produced by speakers form a different region) sound funny to some speakers in Italy too.

However, the "o" in "clock" on Nona's website sounds exactly like an Italian "o" to me. I thought those who didn't have the cot-caught merger had that sound too... well, on second thought, it is a little different, yeah. But that British "o" in clock is the closest you can get to Italian "o", I believe. By the way, there isn't only an "o" in Italian (my variety, at least), there is another kind, similar to the starting sound of the dipthong in "more".

I would do a pot/hot sound.

Actually, I just looked this up in a dictionary I have, published in Britain, and it recommends using the o in dog.  On the other hand, I have a book of Italian dialogs, published in the U.S., which recommends using the au in taut.  (Both for the open o of Italian.)

Now I'm thoroughly puzzled.  Is British o (dog) the same as American au (taut)?  I've never heard that before.  I've always been told that we do not have the British o (dog) in AmE.

CJ