Kooyeen wrote:

Hi Yuki, I don't think we should trust the prounciations given in dictionaries too much. If you listen to some clips from the American Heritage Dictionary, you can hear that the speaker doesn't even tap the t's!!! (listen to "matter"). What kind of American weirdo is that? LOL Anyway, I listened to your clip, and it seems to me that the first vowel is a little too "open" (I don't know how to say that), and the second is a little too "closed". That is a schwa sound, and it can vary a lot... I'm going to open a thread about the schwa in a few days, I'm interested in how much it can vary.

Arg @~@" Quite confusing. Generally I use the first one because sometimes the American Heritage Dictionary is quite hard to repeat the word at times. What do you even "tap" the t's?

So techinically, I can't trust either of those 2 pronunciations? T_T" Well for that word anyway.

Schwa.. hmm >.< heard it several times on the audio CD's, but never fully understand it since been working on vocabularies lately >.<"

Thanks.

Kooyeen wrote:

L.Yuki wrote:  What do you even "tap" the t's? Yep, I do. So "matter" sounds kind of like "madder". I don't rely much on audio pronunciations in dictionaries, I usually just check the phonetic transcription.

My bad, I didn't check my sentences before I hit "post".

I mean to ask "what do you mean "tap" the t's" not "even" ><!

I see what you mean now. I do recall from somewhere I read (arg, bad memories, dunno where I read it) about how sometimes the "t"s become "d"s or however they explain it T_T'

You can understand the pronunciations just from checking phonetic transcripts?.......................