No there is no rule.The two words have the same meaning, 'whilst' is the older version (some dictionaries list it as obsolete) and it usually appears only in formal or poetic writing. If you stick to 'while' you won't ever

Hmm, can I answer even though I am not a native speaker? I would say "thee eagle" because I learned to pronounce it "thee" before vowel sounds. Words like "university" and "wall" don't really start with

Do you know which accent is chosen by MW as the reference in the pronunciation keys. Is it General American? No idea. The audio files comes from several different speakers, but I think I've always heard "accentless" pronunciations

Hi, "writer" doesn't sound like "wider", it sounds like "rider". Anyway, T's are sometimes tapped. It usually happens when T's are between two vowels and the following vowel is not stressed at all (not even a secondary stress on it). Example: Be

CalifJim wrote: You realize, I'm sure, that the g in final ng is silent. It is only a marker to change the usual sound of 'n' to a velar nasal sound instead. It's farther back than your Italian gn but in the same general family of sounds.

I don't think my "er" rhymes with my "cur"; the vowel in the former seems to be glottal. MrP

Hi, I read Nona's new post earlier, but... where is it now? I can't see it anymore. It was a post with a link to a website where you could listen to IPA sounds (for British English). Well, I heard a lot of words pronounced with a clear consonant

Bldudas: thanks so much. I'll def. check them out. I've been staying up all night browsing the web for sites that can help me. You cannot recognise US accents? Where are the people from you hear? You should be able to recognise New York and

You can do just an unreleased T or an unreleased T with a glottal stop. I don't have the statistics, but it seems to me that just the glottal stop is less common. I don't know what you mean by held . You use that word a lot. Do you mean

Hi again, I'm so sorry, I should have read CalifJim's post about T's a little more carefully before posting. I see that there's also a glottal stop after R's, so the t in "smart" or "cart" is held. I see that there's a glottal stop (but sometimes