In Nouns^x, Consonants^x, Phonetics^x

It's not regional (except insofar as it seems to me to be more AmE than BrE) and not sloppy, in my opinion -- unless you want to say also that British speakers who say "choon" for "tune" are sloppy. It is "glide absorption", and it is the sine qua non of authentic American...

Well, latha, generally speaking, the rule says that between two vowels the sound must be pronounced /z/, as well as when you write and and sometimes . If it is next to consonants or it is written as a sibilant, then it must be pronounced /s/. For instance, has an /s/ sound. However, , or have a...

For the usage of "a" or "an", what really matters is the first SOUND of the following noun. We say: a car, a pen, a man. The sounds following "a" are consonant sounds. So: an elephant, an animal, an umbrella. In this case, the initial sounds after "an" are vowel sounds. We say an umbrella,...