Looking up the words "soccer" and "father" in both Dictionary. com and Merriam Webster, I found that the phonetic transcriptions for these two and other similar words contain different vowels to represent– I gather– the same (American English) sound (short o) depending on which of the two dictionaries you use:
Merriam Webster:
Soccer: \ˈsä-kər\
Father: \ˈfä-thər\
Dictionary.com
Soccer: /ˈsɒk ər/
Father: /ˈfɑ ðər/
It is kind of confusing to see three different symbols referring to one or two sounds. So what's the difference in the pronunciation of /ä/, /ɒ/, and /ɑ/ (if there's one)?
Which of these symbols can I use to accurately represent the American English pronunciation of the two aforementioned words and others sharing the same vowel sound?
Best Answer
North America has what we call the father-bother merger, where /ɑ/ and /ɒ/ often end up as the same sound, oftentimes /ɑ/.
So thus /ɑ/ would be a better choice in North America.
Merriam-Webster's system is a bit unique. I don't like to use it in a linguistic discussion. /ä/ = IPA /ɑ/.
IPA is the more universal option for phonetics as a science, even though several symbols will trick English speakers (e.g. /a/, /e/, /o/, /y/ don't exist alone in major English dialects, and /j/ is not the English J, it is the Y consonant, and people love to eschew the standard rhotic sign in English for the trill symbol /r/, which does not exist in most English speech).
Across the pond, Received Pronunciation British and other dialects don't merge "father" and "bother" vowels like that, thus you get /ɒ/ to accommodate (by the way, /ɒ/ is the rounded version of /ɑ/.) Which transcription is "correct" would depend on the dialect of focus, in this case American English.