How to spell out short vowel pronunciations

Question

Let me put it concisely:

How would you write a word to pronounce like 'o' in 'hot'? (short vowel o) How would you write a word to pronounce like 'a' in 'sat'? (short vowel a) How would you write a word to pronounce like 'i' in 'sit'? (short vowel i)

For example, to spell the pronunciation of 'u' in 'shut', you can write 'uh'.

Does anyone know?

If it helps, this is why I want to know. I am trying to build an app that teaches kids phonics, but you can't simply tell the computer to pronounce certain parts of the word. So I need to be able to separate, say, the 'e' sound from 'set'.

Answer 1

You don’t. At most, you use something like the Wells lexical sets: the KIT vowel, the TRAP vowel, the DRESS vowel, the LOT vowel, the STRUT vowel, or the FOOT vowel.

Normally though you should be using the International Phonetic Alphabet, because "spelling pronunciations" are useless.

Answer 2

It sounds like you need a simple way to notate long vowels and short vowels, internally within your code.

You can invent any system you like. Normally, one writes ŏ or ō. If those don't work in your code, you could invent something else.