I'm a native Spanish speaker who's trying to grasp some of the subtleties of (American) English pronunciation. I think the sounds that give me the most trouble are the triplet of low back vowels: /ɑ/, /ʌ/ and /ɔ/. The word "gone" is especially tricky, because each time I hear it I hear something different:
- Sometimes I think it's with a /ɔ/, as if it was "gawn". From my very limited experience, it would seem like this is more common in Southern accents.
- Other times it sounds like a /ɑ/, the same vowel as in "pot".
- The third option would be /ʌ/, like "gun", but I'm pretty sure this is not it.
Which one of these is it? Does it depend on the accent?
Best Answer
English vowels have a large amount of variation between accents and individual speakers. Even among speakers who pronounce cot and caught differently, gone and on may be pronounced either way. Gone and on do not belong to any lexical set, but the closest one for me is cloth.
So it’s generally pronounced /gɑn/, and that’s the pronunciation I would prefer if you’re learning American English. But as you have noticed, in some accents it’s /gɔn/ (as in gaunt). As Peter Shor says, it usually rhymes with on.
I think /gʌn/ is possible, but would analyse it as an unrounded version of the /gɔn/ pronunciation, perhaps Scottish or northern English, in which gun is likely to be pronounced /gʊn/. And as with any vowel, in unstressed position it can become /ə/. So /gən/ is also possible, albeit unlikely because gone is rarely unstressed. For example: