> Phonemic transcription of English "pot" is /pɔt/, and "spot" is /spɔt/.
Your use if this particular IPA indicates that you speak a dialect that has undergone the cot-caught merger, which probably means your accent is from Scotland, the western half of the US, or the Boston area. If you didn't, then you'd transcribe those words as /pɑt/ and /spɑt/ if you spoke a dialect with the father-bother merger (most American accents) or /pɒt/ and /spɒt/ if you spoke a dialect without it (many English accents, including RP).
I'm leaning towards you being Scottish, since Scottish English tends to merge them to [ɔ], while American dialects with the merger tend to merge them to [ɑ].
This goes to show that IPA transcriptions are heavily dependent on dialect.
I did transcribe it wrong; it's phonetically [ɒ] for me -- cot-caught is in effect.
Though this does give opportunity to point out that even phonemic transcriptions can have dialectal differences. There is no one phonemic transcription for English, as the different vowel mergers mean that minimal pairs differ between groups. This kind of variation tends not to happen as much with consonants as vowels, which make them much harder to transcribe even phonemically. But, for example, here's a list of mergers for non-rhotic dialects:
There is also a liiiiitle difference between RP's and SA's [i] and [ɪ] (IPA sounds are "areas", not "points"), as well as a difference in tenseness (British is generally more tense).
So yeah, IPA doesn't completely specify how things sound.
> Phonemic transcription of English "pot" is /pɔt/, and "spot" is /spɔt/.
Your use if this particular IPA indicates that you speak a dialect that has undergone the cot-caught merger, which probably means your accent is from Scotland, the western half of the US, or the Boston area. If you didn't, then you'd transcribe those words as /pɑt/ and /spɑt/ if you spoke a dialect with the father-bother merger (most American accents) or /pɒt/ and /spɒt/ if you spoke a dialect without it (many English accents, including RP).
I'm leaning towards you being Scottish, since Scottish English tends to merge them to [ɔ], while American dialects with the merger tend to merge them to [ɑ].
This goes to show that IPA transcriptions are heavily dependent on dialect.