[HPFGU-OTChatter] Re: Thicknesse: Question on Pronunciation - All and Oil in Texas

[Janette]

>
> bboyminn wrote:
> >
> > Trick business, this pronunciation thing. I do think
> > we can all agree that the difference between Sirius
> > and Serious is extremely subtle, and as I said, nearly
> > to completely non-existent in common speech.
> >
> > A quick look in American Heritage CD-ROM dictionary,
> > indicates that the last part of both words is identical,
> > though I still have my personal doubts.
> >


montims:
ack, and as we are repeating ourselves - in Britain the difference is as
subtle as a sledgehammer, and it is totally existent (is that a word?  it is
now...) in common speech.  Maybe if it had been a book by an American author
about American children (a Huck Finn, if you will), the names used would
have been different, to reflect local accents.  But there is no way that an
English speaker (to differentiate from other Brits here), however sloppily
s/he spoke, could pronounce Si-rius to sound like se-rious, or be unable to
hear the difference...  I used to have this problem in Italy, though, when
my students could not hear the difference between ship and sheep, lip and
leap, sit and seat, etc.  Hungry and angry was another case where they
couldn't say the vowel difference, though interestingly, they could hear
it...  But Carol, I have never heard of Hairy rhyming with Harry -
interesting...


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