What's your point? I made an implicit point: it is not cognitively productive to remember pronounciation for every word. What learners should be taught: a set of heuristics to find possible pronunciations for a word. Mastery of phonetics (or

It is a three syllable word, and there is a vowel cluster. Therefore, the middle syllable get unstressed. The vowel cluster -eu- is not an english one; anglicizing it leads to /u/, cf. deuce, Neuce, etc 'bɛt əl ˌdʒus, /t/ is a tapped t

Is there a difference in the pronunciation of General American 'back' and RP 'back'? For example as in: I came back Wednesday. The reason for asking is because my pronouncing dictionary gives the /æ/ intermediate vowel for both

In phonics, people are brought to the attention that a set of words have the same vowel quality. In KK, this vowel quality is transcribed using IPA. If I am teaching kids, I dont want to burden them with IPA. Phonics consists of set of heuristics

Using “a” and “an” Before Words Raphael asks: When should I use “a” and when should I use “an” before the different words? For example, should I say “a hour” or “an hour?” I stumble over this everytime and dont’t know if I’m getting it right, as

I won't argue with you, of course you're right, you're a native Italian! You can argue! After all, Italian has many variants and I can speak only for mine. After doing some search on the internet, I've found this dictionary where

It is just convention. English spelling is not 100% consistent or regular. There have been many attempts at spelling reform, but none so far has gained any traction. There is no "academy" for English, as there can be for other languages.

From Dictionary.com Word History : Why do we pronounce one (wŭn) and once (wŭns) while other words derived from one, like only, alone, and atone, are pronounced with a long o? Over time, stressed vowels commonly become diphthongs, as when Latin

Hi! Thank you for this interesting discussion and for your answer.Your opinion is important for me. First of all, my problem concerns teaching English as a second language. It's very bad that teachers instructing pupils how to pronounce /ʌ/

The vowel must always be pronounced the same, since it's an IPA symbol that describe a sound. IPA symbols don't change, they are defined that way, and they remain so, so that we can describe some sounds. Hmm... But don't you think this