<story><title>Interactive IPA Chart</title><url>https://www.ipachart.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shazar</author><text>Aren&amp;#x27;t week&amp;#x2F;weak and piece&amp;#x2F;peace pronounced exactly the same?</text></item><item><author>dvirsky</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a native Hebrew speaker. We basically have one way to say each vowel. It took practice for me (not with a coach but with some training videos etc) to even hear the different ways English speakers pronounce them, my brain just wasn&amp;#x27;t tuned to hear them, let alone pronounce them.&lt;p&gt;Week, weak and wick will be pronounced and will sound exactly the same to a non trained Hebrew speaker, and to much much more hilarity - sheet&amp;#x2F;shit, peace&amp;#x2F;piece&amp;#x2F;piss.</text></item><item><author>JaakkoP</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a non-native English speaker, and I&amp;#x27;ve been working with an accent coach to improve my pronunciation. The IPA chart has been instrumental teaching tool, and after about two years it&amp;#x27;s finally starting to sink in.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really helpful to understand the theory behind the pronunciation, instead of just repeating words and attempt to make the same sounds as my coach. As in &amp;quot;this is what your tongue should be doing, but you&amp;#x27;re doing this other thing instead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can even use the chart (and maybe Wikipedia) to identify specific reasons as to why you&amp;#x27;re doing something wrong. For example, there&amp;#x27;s just one way to pronounce &amp;quot;S&amp;quot; in Finnish, whereas there are four ways to do that in English. It&amp;#x27;s just something that never crossed my mind before starting to work with a professional.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ericbarrett</author><text>I&amp;#x27;d pronounce those the same (western US accent), but it can vary.  Check out the caught&amp;#x2F;cot merger, for example: &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>Interactive IPA Chart</title><url>https://www.ipachart.com/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>shazar</author><text>Aren&amp;#x27;t week&amp;#x2F;weak and piece&amp;#x2F;peace pronounced exactly the same?</text></item><item><author>dvirsky</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a native Hebrew speaker. We basically have one way to say each vowel. It took practice for me (not with a coach but with some training videos etc) to even hear the different ways English speakers pronounce them, my brain just wasn&amp;#x27;t tuned to hear them, let alone pronounce them.&lt;p&gt;Week, weak and wick will be pronounced and will sound exactly the same to a non trained Hebrew speaker, and to much much more hilarity - sheet&amp;#x2F;shit, peace&amp;#x2F;piece&amp;#x2F;piss.</text></item><item><author>JaakkoP</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a non-native English speaker, and I&amp;#x27;ve been working with an accent coach to improve my pronunciation. The IPA chart has been instrumental teaching tool, and after about two years it&amp;#x27;s finally starting to sink in.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really helpful to understand the theory behind the pronunciation, instead of just repeating words and attempt to make the same sounds as my coach. As in &amp;quot;this is what your tongue should be doing, but you&amp;#x27;re doing this other thing instead.&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;You can even use the chart (and maybe Wikipedia) to identify specific reasons as to why you&amp;#x27;re doing something wrong. For example, there&amp;#x27;s just one way to pronounce &amp;quot;S&amp;quot; in Finnish, whereas there are four ways to do that in English. It&amp;#x27;s just something that never crossed my mind before starting to work with a professional.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>irrational</author><text>They are for me. Exactly the same pronunciation and emphasis. Maybe there are some dialects of English where they are not pronounced the same.</text></comment>