The reason English is so difficult is because it's such a mishmosh language. Like a bad school-cafeteria casserole, it's got bits and pieces derived from many different languages, both existing and dead. It's primarily German, French, Latin, and

I see you pronounce "you're", "we're" and you'll diferently than I do. I normally pronounce them as and ( We're going to the store ) and . Also, the word "poor". I remember being surprised when I read that some people don't have the pour-poor

Well yes back is always /bæk/ in NAE. "Beg" is more variable. Some people have tense-lax neutralization before /g/. According to Wikipedia: "Some examples of neutralization of /ɛ/ to /eɪ/ before /ɡ/ are beg, egg, Greg, keg, leg and peg's

Hmm. Sorry for the confusion. Now I'm a little confused too. I was saying two different things: 1) The "ay" in play, is pronounced differently in different dialects. Such as a monophthong or something like or other variations. Some dialects

What I meant by there's no contrast is that there are no minimal pairs (in General American). Tense and lax vowels never contrast: /Er\/ and /er\/ both mean "air". In fact, I can't even *hear* the difference between /Er\/ and /er\/ at all. They

My dialect lacks final -ing in words of more than two syllables. Thus I use instead of -ng, and tense the /I/, thus 'crying' ends in ; nothing is . Words of one syllable, however such as king retain the engma, and the /I/ remains lax.

In regard to the comment on Americans not having the variety or plethora of accents present in the UK, I have a mixed response. Part of me wants to be angry because that is a pretty ignorant statement, but another part wants to agree with you for

Fonzie, might I convince you to help me raise objections to linguists' blithe and insulting decision to use the word "Philadelphia" to refer to the entire Upper Chesapeake pronunciation region? You think I don't know? I tell them

My first language was Greek and Ukrainian, even though my background is actually Ukrainian, Polish, Scottish, and Native Canadian Cree. I travelled throughout Europe and Asia through my life, and now I am flutent in seven languages, and can get

Because, of course, it isn't. The positive and negative senses ... enough to both that you can get away with it. I'm familiar with your and Professor Lawler's point of view, but I'm also aware that it collapses in the face of