Enrico C wrote on 21 Nov 2004: One can always record one's own speech and compare it with a native speaker's rendition. On the contrary, I think one can improve a lot if others listen to him/her attentively and make him/her notice ...

He already said that the current version supports mid-western=20 American (presumably Caught=3DCot), but that you can edit the=20 pronunciation table on which it is based. This, of course, would be=20 a major undertaking - particularly if you

When I first heard that there were people who distinguished between Mary, marry, and merry, it was a surprise, although ... wasn't a question of physiology: Once I knew that the distinction existed, I could listen for it and hear it. On the

This has probably been covered before, but it's a tough one to Google, both words being so common. Some people pronounce "then" and "than" identically; others don't. Is there any geographic and/or demographic pattern to

I know he does, but I'm afraid to say that ... 'Avenue' in New York City dialects gets the lax vowel. Yes. I confess that it took me a long time to understand what the lax/tense split was all about, despite the fact that it had always

The explanation (which I find convincing, but your mileage may vary) is that the puff of air is *unvoiced*, whereas all vowels are, by definition, voiced to some extent. If you try the hand-over-mouth experiment with the word "peak", for

On 28 Aug 2004 08:35:31 -0700, R H Draney Jon Miller filted: * I assume Sara meant to write "pooberty" there. I've never had much occasion to use the word, but it would not have occurred to me to pronounce it any other way than

I quite understand why rhotic people would find the usual ... in the language where the combination "uh" represents this sound? Good point, "uh" doesn't really appear in traditional English words, does it? Searching on in

Not for AmE CINCs they don't. "Soft" is in the boss class. Short O. This cryptic response is just too terse. Are you denying that what Areff says is true? Or are you merely saying that for you both words have the same sound (and that

Alan Jones wibbled A local oddity is Calne: older natives use the 'a' ... say "kahn", presumably on the model of "calm" and "palm". Hmmm, I use the a of 'calm' but pronounce the l. Taught by a local.