In Dialects^x, Diphthongs^x

J Lewis wrote: Considering how little effort the British and the Americans generally make to learn foreign languages, I always appreciate whatever attempts my students make to learn English, however imperfect. My hair doesn't stand on end because of mistakes connected with their own...

I've always wanted to ask Marvin what kind of accent that is. The pronunciation of diphthongs as monophthongs is known, but I've never heard of a bag-bang-beg-vague merger. Maybe it's some southern dialect, or a feature of some Ebonics varieties, I really don't know (I'm not an expert in accents,...

>> My understanding of Canadian raising is different. It has to do with changes in the first component of these diphthongs (raising it) before unvoiced consonants, nothing to do with using the same first component in both of these diphthongs. << Yes, it's only before voiceless...

Thank you for your replies. these days I'm trying to improve my pronunciation a little (I'm reading "American Accent Training" by Ann Cook, I also have the audio files) CalifJim wrote: As for the second component, it is often some intermediate sound between ee and i ( feel, bit )...

The first component in both of those diphthongs should be the a in father in Standard American English. The first component in /au/ is more like the a in cat in some dialects, particularly Southern varieties of American English, but in your place, I would ignore the " a in cat " advice. As...

They are diphthongs; I think you should forget trying to disambiguate the components and learn the diphthong as a unit-- it is after all a mobile phenomenon, always changing, and each dialect has its own slight variations.

Sorry, this will probably be a really long post. My mission? To dispell false notions about American English First, we do NOT say "drug" as the past tense of "drag." It's dragged! There are only three kinds of Americans who would say this: Young children who have not yet mastered the...

I might have said: In Finnish "sauna" is something like (sauna) (maybe those (a)s should be (A) - I don't know much about Finnish), but in English it is normally pronounced with the vowel of "saw", something like (sOn@) or (sAn@). I'm sure there are other people in...