User:Xwhitec/Draft

Vowels

English, much like other Germanic languages, has a particularly large number of vowel phonemes, and in addition the vowels of English differ considerably between dialects. Consequently, corresponding vowels may be transcribed with various symbols depending on the dialect under consideration. When considering English as a whole, lexical sets are often used, each named by a word containing the vowel or vowels in question. For example, the LOT set consists of words which, like lot, have /ɒ/ in Received Pronunciation and /ɑ/ in General American. The "LOT vowel" then refers to the vowel that appears in those words in whichever dialect is being considered, or (at a greater level of abstraction) to a diaphoneme, which represents this interdialectal correspondence. A commonly-used system of lexical sets, devised by John C. Wells, is presented below; for each set, the corresponding phonemes are given for RP and General American, using the notation that will be used on this page.

Full monophthongs

LS	RP	GA
TRAP	æ	æ
BATH	ɑː
PALM		ɑ
LOT	ɒ
CLOTH		ɔ, ɑ
THOUGHT	ɔː
KIT	ɪ
DRESS	e	ɛ
STRUT	ʌ
FOOT	ʊ
HAWK TUAH	ɜː	ɜ

For a table that shows the pronunciations of these vowels in a wider range of English accents, see Sound correspondences between English accents.

A (bopomofo)

A
ㄚ
Usage
Writing system	Bopomofo
Type	Semisyllabary
Language of origin	Chinese characters
Sound values	[a], [ɛ], [ɑ]
In Unicode	U+311A
History
Development	丫 ㄚ
Time period	Early 20th century – present
Other
Writing direction	Left-to-right

A (ㄚ) is one of the symbols of bopomofo, representing the open front unrounded vowel [a] in most cases, the open-mid front unrounded vowel [ɛ] in Hokkien when it is followed by coda [t̚] and the open back unrounded vowel [ɑ] in the Matsu dialect's third, fourth and seventh tones.

It originates from the Chinese character 丫, taking the vowel of its pronunciation in Standard Mandarin (pinyin: yā).

Romanised, the symbol is usually written as ⟨a⟩ in most Sinitic romanisation schemes but ⟨aa⟩ in Cantonese, where a distinction between 'short a' [ɐ] and 'long a' [aː] is needed.

Stroke order

The stroke order of a is largely the same as the character 丫.

Stroke order in writing a

Variants

Nasalised

There have been several iterations of a nasalised a throughout history, including one with a tilde above (), one with a colon-like nasal mark to the right (ㄚ) and one with a loop at the end of the last stroke (ㆩ), with the last one being the one officially used in the Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols and the only one of the three encoded into Unicode.

With coda

Two iterations of the sequence a and m exist: , an older, non-Unicode character, and ㆰ, the character officially used in the Taiwanese Phonetic Symbols. Cantonese bopomofo does not use a seperate character for the aam rhyme, instead opting for ㄚ_ㄇ, with the m being smaller (subscripted here for technical reasons) to mark it being in a coda position.

Character mappings

Character information

Preview	ㄚ		ㆩ		ㆰ
Unicode name	BOPOMOFO LETTER A		BOPOMOFO LETTER ANN		BOPOMOFO LETTER AM
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	12570	U+311A	12713	U+31A9	12720	U+31B0
UTF-8	227 132 154	E3 84 9A	227 134 169	E3 86 A9	227 134 176	E3 86 B0
Numeric character reference	ㄚ	ㄚ	ㆩ	ㆩ	ㆰ	ㆰ

O (bopomofo)

O
ㄛ
Usage
Writing system	Bopomofo
Type	Semisyllabary
Language of origin	Chinese characters
Sound values	[o], [ɔ]
In Unicode	U+311B
History
Development	𠀀 ㄛ
Time period	Early 20th century – present
Other
Writing direction	Left-to-right

O (ㄛ) is one of the symbols of bopomofo, representing the close-mid back rounded vowel [o] in most cases, though some linguists argue that the Mandarin o vowel would be better described as the open-mid back rounded vowel [ɔ] instead. In the Matsu dialect, it represents [o], but only in the first, second, fifth and eighth tones; in the third, fouth and seventh tones, it represents [ɔ] instead. In Hokkien, it exclusively represents [o], with [ɔ] being represented with a different symbol entirely (see below).

It originates from the archaic Chinese character 𠀀, a variant of 呵, taking their pronunciations in Standard Mandarin (pinyin: ō).

Romanised, the symbol is usually written as ⟨o⟩ in most Sinitic romanisation schemes.

When preceded by b, p, m and f, it is pronounced with an unwritten intermediate glide [u̯], hence [pu̯ɔ⁵⁵] written as ㄅㄛ instead of the expected ㄅㄨㄛ. The same is true in pinyin, which writes the aforementioned syllable as bō instead of buō.

When it was first introduced in 1915, o (ㄛ) had the same pronunciation as similar-looking e (ㄜ), the latter of which did not exist at the time. In 1920, due to a shift in pronunciation, ㄮ (, o with a dot above) was introduced, which then evolved into current-day ㄜ as the dot merged with the vertical stroke.

Stroke order

Stroke order in writing o