I don’t understand. That clip doesn’t see to contend that at all.
No, the man in the video does not say that, but he wrote that statement in the comments to the video (situated right under the video)
(to see them you’re going to have to open the video on youtube)
Ah, I see it on the original YouTube page in the text.
Hmmm, I can imagine a similarity when I think of the dialect in some parts of the US, but I think that guy needs to improve his listening technique. (Did you notice my edit to message #39?)
Yeah, thanks! I see your point.
Our exchange seems to have been happening at lightning speed. ))
Hi Bev,
I did some more research, and it turns out that in almost all of America the so called “bother-father” merger occurred, eventuating in the vowels in the middle of the words like father and hot sounding the same.
Here’s the article in Wikipedia that expatiates on it:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_ph … her_merger
A curious fact indeed!
I can see how it would happen for ‘bother’ but not for:
- Hot
- Rock
- Chock
- Drop
How come?
I’m a bit confused, in the dictionary ( www.thefreedictionary.com ) the same vowel sound is indicated for all those words.
Or is there some subtlety that makes the vowels in the words “bother” and “hot” differ? If so, is it because of the voiced “th” consonant in “bother”?
Thanks for bearing with me!
I think there is probably something in the theory of a subtle difference, though suspect it’s more to do with having an additional following syllable… that’s just my theory though. 
Perhaps I am just mis-remembering the American accent. It’s been a couple of years since I was there.
(Maybe it’s a good reason for a return visit!)
Can someone transcribe this?
ri:d3ən
Sounds like “region” to me.
Oh yea that was right.
But that’s so complicated…
How can I get the possible tries for the ə symbol.
This is the difficult part.
What is the transcription for this word?
tʌŋ
I tried a lot of possible tries but don’t think anyone seems a word to me.
tunk - tung - toung (just like the word “tough”) - tounk
tongue :)))
Hello,
What is the transcription of the word “Buses”
Bʌsɪz [color=red]Or Bʌsez [color=red]Or Bʌsz
For me, it would be
bʌsɪz
But can you tell me why, please?
I thought it would be e, because “buses”. Not “Busis”
i thought that we make the transcription for “e” letter as it is, but ɪ for “i” letters.
So, can you please tell me why we used the transcription “ɪ” for "e’ here in “buses”?
And what If I answered it like this and only one or two letter transcription were wrong in my answer?
Will the teacher mark the whole answer as wrong and wont give me the mark?
What if you are in the teacher’s place?
And I did the word transcription correct except this one instead of making it “I” I did it “e”, will you consider the whole answer as wrong?
Thanks in advance.
You are confusing letter names with sound again!
Although the word ends in the letters ‘-es’ the sound made when you say it is “iz”
bus-iz.
Letter names are NOT important in phonics. Pronunciation is what governs the symbols you use.
I am not your teacher. Only your teacher can answer that. What I would do is not relevant.
Hello,
The transcription of the word “D[color=red]ecree” is d[color=red]ɪˈkriː
The letter [color=red]e is transcribed to [color=red]ɪ.
Why not e? to be like this d[color=red]eˈkriː
Why has it been changed into ɪ?
Can anyone explain me?
Hi,
English is anything but phonetic. You can never rely on spelling alone to correctly pronounce a word because more often than not the spelling of a word has little to do with its pronunciation. In this regard English is very treacherous!
For example, let’s take the letter “o”. In all these words, the first “o” is pronounced differently:
- oven.
- open.
- office.
So the only way out is to learn by rote how every word is pronounced.
By the way, this accounts for a large number of native speakers who can’t spell properly - because they learned English by ear in childhood, and when it comes time to write they are at a loss, unless of course they have learned how to spell words correctly before (in school).