Cardinal vowel 5, [ɑ]

Cardinal vowel 5 (CV5) is a back, open vowel. Imagine a doctor asking you to ‘say aahhh’; you open the jaw wide, and keep the tongue low in the mouth. This is close to CV5. If you take the tongue any further back, you will feel some friction, and a slight tickle caused by the back of the tongue making contact with the walls of the pharynx. CV5 is written [ɑ]: this is not the regular printed letter , but more like the hand-written . CV5 is an open, or low, back vowel. It is produced with open lips, which are neither rounded nor spread.

English has vowels like this, but not as far back. The vowel in the word ‘father’ in many varieties (including English in the south of England and much of the north) is like this; the vowel in ‘hot’ is like this in most American varieties.

Now move silently between [i] and [ɑ], and [u] and [ɑ]. The vertical movement of the tongue should give you a sense of the height dimension, with [i] and [u] as close vowels, and [ɑ] as an open vowel.