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

Unfortunately students who take IELTS exhibit the same poor speech skills, and that already includes a speaking test (for which I'm an examiner). I gather that pronunciation is one of the criteria for marking and assessment...

But it isn't. You are mishearing the /&I/ diphthong as ... an explanation and recorded sample, see: http://www.ling.mq.edu.au/units/ling210-901/transcription/broad transcri ption/broad transcription.html ( http://tinyurl.com/62n4y .) and

I know he does, but I'm afraid to say that ... 'Avenue' in New York City dialects gets the lax vowel. Yes. I confess that it took me a long time to understand what the lax/tense split was all about, despite the fact that it had always

If all these Americans sound the same to all the other Americans, why would there be any work for dialect coaches? You don't know much about American accents. In fact, nothing. I know there is a standard accent that I teach to anyone who wants

I've encountered very few Americans without one. One of the interesting things I've noticed when speaking French is that some people hear my accent only after I tell them I have an accent. Often a person can be pinpointed to a state or

"'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason the volume of the burst can't vary from one person to another, from one sound to another, and from one time to another over a continuous range of values. It

Now "plosive" is a relative term. In plosives, the airstream is completely blocked and then released, producing a temporary burst of overpressure. "'Plosive' is a relative term" means that there's no reason the

Interesting observation in that US English now stands in much the same juxtaposition to English as Roman Latin did to Greek. Except that Latin didn't derive from the speech of greek settlers in Italy - unless you count Aeneas as recounted in

Are you near a large city? Look in the yellow pages of the phone book under "Speech therapy", "Public speaking" ... specialize in these things, working with folks who stutter, or who have speech impediments, or who have a