The long open back vowel

The long open back vowel (monophthong) is pronounced by the middle part of the tongue being slightly raised from a fully open position. The lips are spread. The vowel is considerably lengthened in front of lenis consonants. The Norwegian counterpart is close enough for Norwegians to have no difficulties in pronouncing it correctly. The sound is generally represented by the spelling symbol "a". Note that rules are not the same for American English as for SBE. Examples are words like: pass, ask, plant, which are pronounced as follows: (SBE), and (Amr). The illustration on the left shows the general tongue position at the pronunciation of the sound, the illustration on the right shows the relative position as compared to front vowels