I won't argue with you, of course you're right, you're a native Italian! You can argue! After all, Italian has many variants and I can speak only for mine. After doing some search on the internet, I've found this dictionary where

Hello, I don't know this either. I thought diphthongs could consist only of combinations of vowel sounds. I've just checked this in some dictionaries and they seem to confirm my understanding. From Oxford online dic : diphthong : a

It makes it even more difficult when you look at the variations in the American Dialect. There is no "American Accent" --there are 7 recognized main divisions (Western/Californian, Upper Midwest, Midland, Southern, MidAtlantic,

(snip) To the best of my memory, R.J. and Professor Fontana (and others) have discussed that the standard *American* "ah" ... if I'm remembering correctly. "Ah" has to be qualified because, unqualified, it means that

At the AUE site, there's a page headed "Pronunciation of newsgroup contributors' names". The URL is http://www.alt-usage-english.org/audio gallery/index.html When you ... the pronunciation that's given to the spelling

There's some CIC humor in a new commercial for IBM: ... replies, "That's awful." (Or does the boss say, "That's offal"?) Whoa. Zimms, in all CINC AmE, SFAIK, "off" has the "caught" vowel! (No?)

The thing to remember in all those oi/er discussions is that *it's not a rhotic R*. It's like that way ... in "book," or something. Think how the Brits say "First things first." "Fust things fust," sort of,

A nonrhotic person writing to another nonrhotic person can write something like "bodeeger" and the second person will interpret it ... at the end, which was *not* intended. Using Rs to convey certain vowel sounds is misleading in an

Somehow I miss the logic in this. If they are non-rhotic then of course the postvowelic R is a vowel, what else? But many of your readers *are* rhotic and interpret -er or -ar or -or to mean something quite different. Yes, that's what I meant.

I wouldn't consider it a swear word. I'd consider it a substitute for one. Hmmm... depends on whether you apply the term "swear word" to certain words which are thereby *intrinsically* swear words, or to certain *usages*, in