The Al Realpolitik Institute of Sulfur Mining & Extraction

[platypeanArchcow]

I can see why the pronunciation of country would be confusing to a non-native English speaker, considering it's just one letter off from "county" which is pronounced exactly as spelled. I suspect now the silent o is in there specifically to avoid having that word appear as part of it.

Eh, the issue here is that the vowel in "country" and that other word is not present in most other European languages (basically the only other major language that has it is Korean) and so different European accents would render it differently.  If Antonio learned how to pronounce "country" from Italians and the other word from French people, then that would account for the difference he gives.

[platypeanArchcow]

I can see why the pronunciation of country would be confusing to a non-native English speaker, considering it's just one letter off from "county" which is pronounced exactly as spelled. I suspect now the silent o is in there specifically to avoid having that word appear as part of it.

Eh, the issue here is that the vowel in "country" and that other word is not present in most other European languages (basically the only other major language that has it is Korean) and so different European accents would render it differently.  If Antonio learned how to pronounce "country" from Italians and the other word from French people, then that would account for the difference he gives.

He pronounces "c**nt" wrong, not "country". There is a reason the IPA sign for the vowel is based on the letter A, you know - and it's that any non-English writer would take it to be a sort of A.

French-speakers and Latin American Spanish-speakers (but not Spaniards) pretty much all pronounce it as /ɔ/, basically because their /a/ is far more fronted.  So no.  It's a question of whether you view position or roundedness as more salient.

[platypeanArchcow]

Wait, how are you people pronouncing these words? The vowel sound is traditionally transcribed as /ʌ/, but in my English it's much closer to [ə], which can of course be represented by any of six letters.

This is making me wonder if I actually distinguish between /ʌ/ and /ə/. I don't think I've read anything about such a merger.

You're right -- in the US in general, and in California in particular, this vowel is more centralized than in other varieties of English.  (My 12-year-old brother's pronunciation of short vowels uniformly confuses me by exhibiting way too many of the arrows on that chart.)  And of course in Indian English it's much closer to [ə], I don't know how much that influences you.  But /ə/ is also a fluid concept -- the French one is very nearly [œ], and the English one is much closer to, well, [ʌ].

The answer to your question is that it's not really relevant whether they sound the same because they're in complementary distribution -- /ʌ/ is always at least weakly stressed.