What I meant by there's no contrast is that there are no minimal pairs (in General American). Tense and lax vowels never contrast: /Er\/ and /er\/ both mean "air". In fact, I can't even *hear* the difference between /Er\/ and /er\/ at all. They

>> PLAY - I always say /plei/, but here you can hear /plɛi/ > BEAR - I always say /ber/, but here you can hear /bɛr/ << According to Wikipedia, before /r\/, in American English " is one of tense-lax neutralization, where the

Kooyeen, there is something that you should know. While it is true that North American English has tense-lax neutralization before /r\/, thus and are heard as the same, I would say that most speakers of General American English, use a vowel closer

It seems to me that you are wrestling with the "Second-Letter Rule", which says that a single vowel letter (i.e., not combined with another vowel letter in a digraph) is pronounced tense if the second letter after it is another vowel letter,

to communicate in English if we know 1000 words. IT IS THE EASIEST LANGUAGE!... The language of the future

Yep. I'm serious. Here's how I say these words as compared to General American. "N" represents "ng"; upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and upper case vowels represent tense vowels. I listed the word, first, the General American pronunciation

That's a very big question. It can't be answered in a single post. The main differences are the pronunciation of r , the t between vowels, the sound of au , and the tense and lax o s. CJ

I'm not familiar with MLB. In American English it is very common to omit the "t" when it follows a stressed syllable ending in "n" and precedes an unstressed syllable beginning with a vowel. "winter" and "winner" are indistinguishable. The

... would you please tell me how would you pronounce "ship" ? would it be like " shape" The vowel sound in "ship" is completely different in American English from the vowel sound in "shape". __________ I'm not aware of any difference in

Hi Xcats, This is related to the spelling of the past tense forms of regular verbs; it also applies to the "ing" form. spelling of regular affirmative past tense forms Most regular verbs: add -ed work —worked help —helped start —