AJ Hoge's "effortless english" is a waste of money. I made the mistake of buying it for a friend who doesn't speak much English and she doesn't even use it. I don't blame her because it takes a lot of effort to learn with

Thank you Grammar Geek for your compliment, I am glad to be here with you sharing and learning. In fact I have also meant what you said. If the pronunciation starts with a consonant sound then it takes "a", as in "university". Besides, as in

CalifJim wrote: I read somewhere that Mario Pei, the linguist, tried to learn a different language every year. He supposedly claimed that Vietnamese was the most difficult. CJ I disagree with the linguist Mario Pei not

Thanks, anon. Without your post, I would have missed this thread. Goodman wrote: Hi CJ, What an impressive thread you have posted. You have slowly made me a fan of yours. Yep! CalifJim wrote: In any case, the struggle for

Lesson 1: Basic Pronunciation The following will make you sound Southern to non-Southerners: Pin pen merger: Pronounce "pin" and "pen" both as pin . Any /E/ followed by an /n/ should be sounded as /In/ No yod dropping: therefore " No

Pronunciation is very important, but with English that means stress patterns. Getting the stress patterns right for a whole phrase is often more important than getting every single word exactly right. The vowels can be off a bit, but the stress

Rules help a long as they are predominantly consistent. When a rule is significantly inconsistent then it will lead to confusion. For example, what rule can be applied to the double "o" sound in English? The words: food, blood, took, foot,