So is this the dumbing down of England or have they always been dumb, too? Dumb enough to be the ones who came up with those spellings in the first place. English spelling is no longer phonetic, although it was to the monks and scribes who wrote

Hi! Thank you for this interesting discussion and for your answer.Your opinion is important for me. First of all, my problem concerns teaching English as a second language. It's very bad that teachers instructing pupils how to pronounce /ʌ/

Ok, lol... then... I don't know if I understand your problem, but you are right, transcriptions in dictionaries are not accurate. But I don't know what to say, because it varies from dictionary to dictionary...I'll just give you a few

The vowel must always be pronounced the same, since it's an IPA symbol that describe a sound. IPA symbols don't change, they are defined that way, and they remain so, so that we can describe some sounds. Hmm... But don't you think this

Hi (and welcome to Englishforums Smile), As I know, in modern English the vowel is no more pronounced as... ouch! The vowel must always be pronounced the same, since it's an IPA symbol that describe a sound. IPA symbols don't change, they

<Where are the books that teach spoken English ? I'm a go there? What a ya doin? Ah'll see ya domorrow. > They're on there way: English Pronunciation in Use Intermediate I doubt that's really comprehensive. I think I once took a look at that

I remember at school there was a combined volume of "Billy Liar" and "The Loneliness of The Long Distance Runner" ubiquitous to the "English Rooms". I thought the latter to be the better story, better written; but

Hi, the American Pronunciation you found is ok, and Merriam-Webster is the best (in my opinion) to check American pronunciations. The thing is you have to learn how to read phonetic transcriptions in the dictionaries you use, because often every

Well, for one thing, the process that changes "nuclear" to /nuk@lr=/ is that same one that changed "brid" to "bird", so with that logic, it is a mispronunciation say "bird", because the "correct" pronunciation is "brid". Remeber, phonetics

Well, it depends on how you pronounce them. For example, you pronounce "go" as whereas I would say or . I would also use a schwa for "to": instead of saying . Thirdly, I would pronounce brothers as . I would also say rather than for "new". So you