_or_

or, for, force, fork, cork, pork, form, storm, born, corn, north, horse, sport, short, lord, sword, organise

Stress on 2nd syllable:

report, support, afford, important

Stress on 1st syllable

morning

(There are many more words with the ‘or’ spelling)

o_r

‘ore’

adore, before, bore, wore, sore, core, explore, more, score, store, tore/torn

‘oar’

boar, roar, soar, board, coarse

‘-our’

four, pour, your, court, course

‘oor’

floor, door, poor

_al_ and _all

End of word (‘all’)

ball, call, fall, hall, mall, small, tall, wall

Start of word (‘al’)

almost, also, alter, always, chalk, talk, walk

ought/aught

‘ought’

• buy – bought
• bring – brought
• fight – fought
• seek – sought
• think – thought

‘aught’

• teach – taught
• catch – caught
• daughter

_ar_

war, warm, ward

Two syllables

• award, reward, quarter

Also:

• water

_aw_

raw, law, claw, draw, thaw, straw

lawn, hawk, dawn, yawn

drawn, prawn, spawn

crawl, trawl, shawl, scrawl

*Disclaimer!

Many of these homophones and vowel sounds differ according to accents.

In many parts of North America, /ɑː/ and /ɔː/ sound the same (UK – cart vs caught)

‘father – bother’ also share the same /ɑː/ sound (In the UK, they are different).

This means that ‘caught’ /ɔː/, ‘cot’ /ɒ/, ‘father’ /ɑː/ and ‘bother’ /ɒ/ all have the same stressed vowel /ɑː/ in US English!

In US English, the  /ɔː/ (‘or’) sound appears only followed by /r/, as in ‘north or ‘force’.

See video below.

bored – board

or – oar – ore

sore – soar – saw

stork – stalk

sort – sought

horse – hoarse

soared – sword

war – wore

worn – warn

four – for

The ‘L’ has different sounds depending on its position in the word [Clear and Dark L].

When L comes before a vowel, as in the words “light” and “late,” it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, the area just behind the front teeth. This pronunciation of L is called “clear L.”

When L comes before a consonant or occurs at the end of a word, as in the words “fool” and “ball,” an additional movement is made with the back of the tongue, which is raised towards the velum. This pronunciation of L is called “dark L”.

Note that in words like “pole,” L also occurs at the end of a word because the last vowel letter, E, is silent, that is, not pronounced, hence, “dark L.” 

Some people pronounce L as “clear L” in all positions. Thus, they pronounce “light,” “late,” and “fool,” “ball.”

In many accents, ‘L’ becomes more like a ‘w’ sound.

This YouTuber has become famous for his ‘Boh-oh-oh-wa-er’ pronunciation videos! [‘bottle of water’].