Biblical Hebrew Forum

[<michaelabernat9001 AT sbcglobal.net>]

Isaac,

The vowel sound you don't seem to hear is an unstressed vowel found in many 
American English words that cannot be pronounced without it. Evidently, you 
just don't distinguish it from the stressed form of the vowel. It is the 
first vowel in ago, the o in bigot, the first and last a in banana, and the i 
in horrid.

 

I took a course in phonetic linguistics back in prehistoric times. From what 
I saw with the students in that class, you will never hear that vowel unless 
you practice pronouncing it and then mispronouncing the same word by 
stressing the same vowel.

Sincerely,
Michael Abernathy