I stopped reading Katherine Kerr when the same mistake was perpetuated in her 3rd or 4th book: she gave 'thin' ... of an o - I like to call it a smiley - so %u means a smiley over the u. That diacritic is called a "breve" in

I have come to the sudden realization that I don't ... and I can't say (wVjr). -Aaron J. Dinkin Dr. Whom I pronounce them all in the same way. But I have heard others pronounce them differently, as you say. Fi-uhr, with a schwa. But no one

A.u.e: Does anyone else have these two different "-ire"s? Consciously or unconsciously? With the same distribution as mine or different? When I come to think about it, it appears that words in your first list are slightly shorter sounds.

I'm confused by your "help" reference. What I intended to ... AmE dictionary that I have seen. Thanks for the help. To a Southerner, (hEj@lp) is exactly the pronunciation that an AmE dictionay indicates. And it's not necessarily

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The same distinction between /a/ (before voiceless) and /A/ (before voiced) extends to /aj/ and /Aj/. Hence 'bike' /bajk/, 'line' /lAjn/, etc. It's standard to have different allophones here, but usually the difference is that

Which brings me on to another point. The second syllable of "idea" I pronounce the same as "ear", but I ... don't like that either, it seems much easier just to say + (without pronouncing the R of course). I pronounce

The best I can describe it is her pronunciation of the word "sequoia". The rest of the family would pronounce ... the Midwest or East. It's kind of the family joke, which is what spurred my interest in the whole thing. I don't