/e/ sound and /ei/ sound

English as a Second Language English Vocabulary, Grammar and Idioms
1

Dear Alan,
in the audio recording secsion 13, you had given us the /e/ sound and the /ei/ sound, however, i found the word mad is not both /e/ sound and /ei/ sound, can you show me an explanation?

2

Hi anhgiap,

Most of the time when you find the letter ‘a’ in a word it is a pretty safe bet that it is either pronounced like the ‘a’ in bat or in bath. The a-sound in ‘m[color=indigo]ad’ sounds quite similar to ‘m[color=indigo]an’.

3

Hi Anhgiap,

You are exactly right. In that phonetics recording, the “mad - made” pair is out of place. The word “mad” should not have been included because it contains neither the /e:/ nor the /e[size=84]I[/size]/ sound.
dictionary.cambridge.org/define. … 7961&ph=on

In American English, the letter “a” is usually pronounced the same way in all four of the words in the quote above. It is pronounced as /[size=109]æ[/size]/ in all four of those words.

The “a” in the word “father” is pronounced as /a:/ and I believe that is the same sound that is used in British English for the word “bath”.

The letter “a” is pronounced as /e[size=84]I[/size]/ in words such as "day, “gale”, “late”, “made” and “potato”, for example.
.

4

That would make it equivalent to the BrEng pronunciation, according to these dictionaries:

dictionary.cambridge.org/define. … 1+0&dict=A
dictionary.cambridge.org/define. … &dict=CALD