Hey All,

I have been refining my Conlang and as i work on it, I find I dislike vowel sounds and letters that are too similar such that it causes confusion and redundancy in my opinion.

This issue is really centered around English vowel sounds: particularly the a /ɑ/ in "father" and o /ɑ/ in "not" as listed on the Generalize America IPA table. Same thing is true for a /ə/ in "about" and u /ʌ/ in "rut".

Question is: can anyone name a situation using an english word where it is important to maintain these vowel distinctions instead of just using a single vowel IPA for each situation? I am trying to make the decision to just kill these somewhat redundant and confusion vowel sounds in my Conlang.