By Consonants, Dialects

James- I think the differences all could be accounted for by dialect. In American English, I have been taught that the only syllabic consonants are l and n, but not m. all of the words above such as london and gordon could be pronounced with a syllabic consonant. The determinant for any sc is...

There is no /h/ and /w/ in the words "shah" and "shaw". There are the letters <h> and <w>, but it's a mistake to think that these letters are somehow determining which vowels you have in these words.

Right. A lot of your examples, like cang go, may shade ever so slightly into the assimilated version, but full assimilation very rarely takes place. Of course, you may find a speaker who does that sort of thing all the time*, or you may find a regional dialect that makes use of some of...

Is was wondering if there is any difference between 'better' and 'bed or...' in American English. At least previously I thought that the vowel preceding the letter 'd' is longer in 'bed or', since it is followed by a voiced consonant in any English dialect. After these replies to the original...

CalifJim wrote:Rhyming friend to stand sounds peculiar to me, and somewhat Texan, perhaps. It's definitely not standard. Thanks.Well, I'm not an expert on accents... but did you listen to the audio clip? Would you say pronouncing "again" that way sounds southern? I think I've heard that...

Anonymous wrote:>> Only one exception, after (the attachment was from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary) after the sounds like /ft/ <<Nope. There is no difference where it comes to the pronunciation in North American English and English English dialects of the /t/...

>> Only one exception, after (the attachment was from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary) after the sounds /ft/ <<Nope. There is no difference where it comes to the pronunciation in North American English and English English dialects of the /t/ in the word "after".

I don't think it's called intonation. It's allophonic vowel length: vowel phonemes are realized as longer vowel allophones before voiced consonant phonemes in the coda of a syllable. This is found in all dialects of American English. Some American dialects have some phonemic vowel distinctions...

Hi,Americans use different intonation for vowel sounds in one-syllable words, according to the final consonant (whether it is voiced or unvoiced). Examples:Bit - Bid (the vowel in "bid" sounds different, it is on two levels of intonation)niece - knees (the vowel in "knees" is on two levels)cot -...

>> I once asked "Do your tongue touch the roof of your mouth when you say cool?" - A native speaker said "Yes, you can't do a L without touching the roof", another said "No", another said "It depends how lazy I am". << Well, l-vocalization is a common feature in several dialects. ...