Native speakers of English don't, unless dictating to children. In ... or "handbag" (which in rapid speech is indistinguishable from "ham-bag"). I'm English and have just a vestige of a "d" in handsome and a

With the stress on the second vowel of 'romeo', as I was taught it. The words themselves are chosen to be readily distinguishable in poor hearing conditions, and the ordained stress patterns are designed to aid this distinction. If I'm

The "NATO phonetic alphabet" lets you spell a word in ... will let you spell "truck" "tango romeo uniform charlie oscar" That would be "tango romeo uniform charlie kilo". With the stress on the second vowel

Hi athelas (and welcome to English Forums), I think you may be starting from a false premise here; I'm not at all sure that many British speakers pronounce 'Kind of" as 'Kine-uh'. The pronunciation of 'Kind of" as

Samuraifingers: I'm sorry if I made it seem like I was expecting a professional assessment of my pronunciation. I am really only looking for brief comments such as "this or that vowel has the wrong quality" or "too much

Where do you live? Here in Oregon it seems to be very common to use "thuh" before vowel sounds. Teevision news readers, who in most areas are expected to be exemplars of correct, or at least locally accepted, pronunciation, here

This debate really seems to be about two different things, spelling and pronunciation. The letter w (and y) is often used with other vowels (and sometimes alone as well) in spelling to reperesent a vowel sound . In the words hi and by , the letter

I think you're right on, Kooyeen. And thanks for the reply. I am a stickler in my pronunciation classes that students learn to say the -s (and -ed) endings correctly. Even though I do this, I know that native English speaking Americans rarely

Frequently listen to English spoken by native speakers and repeat them. Watch English movies, listen to music, audio clips, BBC news and presentations. Control your rate of speech to get the correct intonation and rhythm of English. Use your