the long and the short of it

[Mark A Mandel]

        [Larry Horn]
#>>We didn't have those, but I thought "short o" was the vowel of "dog"
#>>and "laundry" as opposed to that of "log", "frog", and "father".
#>>Hard to remember, though.
#>>larry

        [Fritz Juengling]
#>Those are all the same for me.
#>Fritz

        [Larry again]
#Right, but for those who round the vowel of "dog" but not that of the
#other words in the group, it makes a certain kind of sense to retain
#the name "short o" for the rounded open-o vowel of "dog", while using
#some "a" vowel label (but not "long a!") for the unrounded one in
#"log", "father", etc.

It *would* make a certain kind of sense, but that's not what my teachers
(using, I must suppose, the same vowel distribution I did)  taught. No
name that I recall for /O/ (low-mid back rounded). That may be because
the <o> spelling for that vowel is quite exceptional in this dialect;
most <o>s that aren't /o:/ are /a/, and the most common, and only
unambiguous, spellings for /O/ are <au> and <aw>, neither of which is a
... monograph? Oh, dear!

-- Mark A. Mandel