I must be slow this morning, but I got there in the end. You are not the only one, even I did not get it straight away. As John seems to have noticed, in day to day life I am John Lawler. But when I first started posting to this group and

Indeed. When English was first written, it was spelt phonetically. ... English represents how English was spoken in the 16th century. It's more complicated than that. Spelling standardised (thanks to printing) shortly *after* Shakespeare's

I've never heard Shakespeare being performed with original pronunciation, so ... and spelling was much closer then than it is now. Indeed. When English was first written, it was spelt phonetically. However, by Shakepeare's time

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 ...

Which do you think is better to learn? The one that doesn't require Flash. Other than that, it's up to you. There is no rigid number for the vowels in American English or any other dialect of any language. It all depends on where you draw

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

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

}> }> I can half understand why we don't say Paree, but why shouldn't }> English speaking people be able to sort out the local pronunciations }> of proper nouns in English speaking countries? Why do all English }> people, it

} "Raymond S. Wise" (Email Removed) wrote in message } }> }> Since the pronunciations are identical, this might confuse some people. } But }> it should be easy enough to memorize the distinction in spelling. "Used }